By Todd Jorgenson
After the St. Mark’s offense seized the momentum in Friday’s matchup against Covenant, the defense and special-teams units took care of the rest.
The Lions dominated in all three phases of the game to pull away from the Knights for a 52-6 win at Miller Field in the first-ever meeting between the schools whose campuses are about four miles apart.
Bolstered by five defensive takeaways, St. Mark’s bounced back after suffering its first loss of the season last week against rival Episcopal School of Dallas.
The Lions (3-1) capitalized on advantages in size, depth, and experience against a young Covenant squad that features just six seniors on its roster.
“Our defense is capable of playing at a really high level, and after the first couple of drives, they settled in,” said St. Mark’s head coach Harry Flaherty. “We said that if we kept wearing them out, there would be some opportunities in the second half to blow it open, and that’s what happened.”
Blaize Schumacher threw for two touchdowns, including a 53-yard strike to Charlie Aisner on the opening drive for the Lions. That started a streak of 52 unanswered points.
A pair of sibling duos also reached the end zone for St. Mark’s. Donnell Dickson ran for a score in the second quarter, and older brother David — who finished with a game-high 95 yards on the ground — followed suit in the third.
On the next possession, Miles Aisner matched older brother Charlie’s touchdown by catching a scoring pass from Schumacher to stretch the margin to 38-6.
“We faced a little adversity early on. This is a dangerous team that has some weapons. Our guys settled down, didn’t get caught up in that, and focused on the next play,” Flaherty said. “It was a game where we had to earn it, and our guys took the right approach, and some things went our way.”
St. Mark’s took advantage of consistently favorable field position and broke the game open, with the defense supplying three touchdowns of its own.
The Lions intercepted passes on four consecutive Covenant possessions in the third quarter, with two of them — by Mac Saye and Cameron Steinbrueck — returned for scores. The final three St. Mark’s touchdowns came in a span of less than two minutes.
Earlier, Roman Lewis scooped up an errant punt snap deep in Covenant territory and rumbled to the end zone.
That was symptomatic of the offensive struggles that plagued the Knights (2-3) for most of the game after a promising start.
They opened with an impressive drive that included a key fourth-down conversion on a run by Clive Rowland. Two plays later, Ryan Hillner scrambled for a 31-yard touchdown.
However, while the Knights tallied 71 yards on that opening possession, they managed just 62 afterward. Covenant completed only seven of 28 passes and had six first downs.
The lopsided defeat is part of an upgraded nondistrict schedule this year for the Knights, who will head into a bye week before the start of a challenging TAPPS district slate on Oct. 2 against Shelton.
“They’re a really good team. We didn’t execute, and good programs take advantage of that,” said Covenant head coach Jacob Zinn. “In order to win big games, you’ve got to play in big games. We want to play the best competition we can to prepare for games in November and onward.”
Meanwhile, the Lions have three wins by an average margin of 45 points. They will return home next week to meet Grapevine Faith before facing the SPC 4A gauntlet in October.
“Last week was a tough one for us. We had to rebound,” Flaherty said. “Even though we have a big conference schedule down the road, we just need to focus on the next game.”
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