CHAMPAIGN — Danville’s football team walked onto the Tommy Stewart Field turf Saturday afternoon without its head coach.
Marcus Forrest is recovering from a successful heart transplant last month.
The Vikings also entered their season-opening Big 12 game against Champaign Central without star athlete Devin Miles. The reigning News-Gazette Player of the Year wasn’t available for his first game as a senior.
How would Danville respond to this adversity? Pretty well, it turns out.
The Vikings compiled four rushing touchdowns and recovered three fumbles on defense en route to a 30-12 victory over the Maroons.
“Our kids played hard, flew around to the ball,” Danville interim coach Mitch Thomas said. “We made mistakes that we knew we would with young kids, but I thought they rallied.”
The Vikings (1-0, 1-0 Big 12) boast 15 seniors on their roster, but they also utilize underclassmen in several key spots.
One is linebacker, where Danville deploys two freshmen and a sophomore.
Another is running back. Sophomore Antuan Lee carried the ball just once for 6 yards in Saturday’s first half, but he broke through with 74 yards and three touchdowns on seven carries in the second half.
“Exploded like an absolute monster,” said Vikings senior quarterback Eric Turner, who accounted for 187 yards and two scores through his combined rushing and throwing efforts. “He’s a little guard (5-foot-8, 135 pounds), so it’s like, ‘It’ll be easy to tackle him.’ But he’s so fast in and out of his cuts, it’s like, ‘What do you do about it?’”
Turner handled most of the visitors’ early ball-carrying duties, including a 2-yard touchdown plunge to open scoring. He also connected with senior Larvell Watkins on a 45-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter.
“He’s the one that told me the safety was cheating over the middle of the field, so that’s why I threw that pass to him,” Turner said. “It definitely is a booster because I wasn’t that good at passing last year.”
The Vikings also made it difficult for Central (0-1, 0-1) to finish drives in the end zone.
Danville forced three turnovers in its own territory — one fumble, two on downs — in addition to creating two other lost fumbles. One of the Maroons’ unsuccessful possessions ended when senior lineman Joseph Irons sacked junior quarterback Cody Brown near midfield.
“We obviously wanted to get off the field earlier, but against that kind of a ball control offense you’re going to give up first downs,” Thomas said. “If you give up a first down, if you give up a 10-yard run, you just regroup and keep playing. … We eventually got stops.”
Central’s defense scored its first touchdown when junior and first-year team member Klaton Davis intercepted a Turner pass and returned it 75 yards to paydirt.
That cut the Maroons’ deficit to 12-6 early in the third quarter.
“Pick-six, how about that?” Central coach Tim Turner said. “Those guys (Davis and twin brother Kadin), they’re freaks of nature. … They’re really going to be a bright spot for our squad.”
Danville responded by tallying the next 18 points, all coming from Lee’s feet on touchdown runs of 35, 2 and 5 yards.
The Maroons’ offense got on the board with less than five minutes to play, when Brown found Klaton Davis on a short toss that Davis took 47 yards along the home sideline.
Like Thomas, Tim Turner knows what a youthful roster looks like. In fact, the third-year Central coach has just six seniors.
“We play a lot of sophomores,” Tim Turner said. “That’s what really encourages me about this season. We’ve got six games for our guys to grow up. … To have that happen and get it under our belts to where these kids are able to compete, I’m excited.”
Eric Turner also expressed excitement over facing an actual opponent on the football field for the first time since Nov. 2, 2019, when the Vikings dropped a Class 6A first-round playoff game to Chatham Glenwood.
Suiting up on a spring afternoon — which Danville also will do in Weeks 2 and 3 — might take some getting used to.
“I’m used to playing under lights, (making) a bunch of highlights, fans all in the stands,” Eric Turner said. “I’m happy to be playing, but it definitely is weird.”