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Bees' opening victory worth the wait
Posted Online: Sept. 05, 2009, 8:48 pm
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By Tom Johnston, tjohnston@qconline.com
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By the end of Saturday's season opener, it appeared to be a pretty normal day for the St. Ambrose University football team. The Fighting Bees racked up 415 yards offense, the defense pitched a shutout while forcing six turnovers, and the players were -- for the most part -- all smiles after a 44-0 nonconference victory over Trinity International University. But it was anything but a normal day at Brady Street Stadium -- a day that didn't end until after 6 p.m. First off, there was a scheduling snafu with the officials, which are assigned by a third-party service. The game was delayed for two hours and 13 minutes as the 7-man crew, which thought the 1 p.m. game was at 6, drove in from Burlington. Then, the Bees were totally stagnant on offense, managing just 53 yards on 25 snaps and after 30 minutes were tied at 0. Then, thanks to the defense, the Bees exploded in the second half. The game turned on TIU's first post-halftime possession. Free safety Colin Green forced a fumble by Cole Bamburger that PJ Conroy recovered at TIU's 3. Jake Eikenberry scored on the ensuing play and the Bees were off and running. "The turning point of the game was that fumble down by the end zone,'' said TIU coach Mike Gims after his club fell to 0-2. "That lit their fuse and they took off from there.'' SAU coach Mike Magistrelli gave plenty of credit to the defense that not only set up that game-turning pick, but also scored -- on Jim Forner's 32-yard interception return. Steve Herbert and Colin Suitor also had picks, Herbert's leading to a score. "I was real happy to see our defense play like that; that's what we expect to see out of those guys,'' said Magistrelli. "We scored on defense, which I don't think we've done for a couple of years.'' Given new life and a spark, the offense responded. First-year quarterback Michael Hayward sandwiched touchdown passes of 50 yards (to transfer Jacob Rohde) and 62 yards (to sophomore Billy Rembold) around his own 4-yard run. Following Forner's score, freshman tailback Carter Oltman burned a tiring Trojan defense for a 64-yard scoring burst. Oltman, who only played two series, had 100 yards rushing on nine carries. SAU's longest scoring drive was by the reserves -- a 10-play, 4:11 possession that resulted in Patrick Schmadeke's 22-yard field goal with :55 seconds left in the game. "We just thought we needed to execute better and we did,'' said Magistrelli of the second half. For the Bees, it just took a while to get things to fall into place -- in more ways than one. 
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