JACKSONVILLE - With a huge defensive effort by their smallest player, the Fleming Island High flag football team used seven deflected passes from rusher Daisy Fletcher to, ironically, knock host Fletcher High out of the Class 3A region playoffs with a 26-0 dominating defensive win Thursday night in Neptune Beach.
"I just saw that she was throwing low passes in the early part of the game," said Fletcher, AKA DFletch, who combined with Audrey Ellis in a double rushing defensive scheme put together by Fleming Island coach Clint Lyons, to keep Fletcher multi-talented quarterback Jasmine Cross, who had 25 touchdowns for the season and also orchestrated a dramatic 13-12 district semifinal win over Fleming Island just a week ago, in check. "She is about as tall as I am; not that tall, and I just timed a jump when she turned to throw. It worked better than I thought."
For Lyons, who reiterated to his team in the post-game huddle the old adage of defense wins championships, the strategy to corral Cross was his primary concern for the week between the two games.
"We knew we could not let her run free back there," said Lyons, now 12-3 while Fletcher finishes at 14-3. "We utilized kind of a double rusher, double linebacker box for the Fletcher quarterback and all four did their jobs nearly perfectly."
Fletcher caught Fleming Island's opening score off a pass from quarterback Devyn Dudones with Emily Poucher catching the PAT for a 14-0 lead.
Just into the second quarter, Dudones had Poucher and Seven Gourdet in the back of the end zone and threw a jump ball that Poucher reached up to put the score at 14-0 with Addison Campolettano catching the PAT at the pylon.
In the third, an Ellis sack, a deflection from Fletcher and an Ellis/Fletcher combo sack set up a short field with Dudones finding Gourdet in the end zone between two defenders to put the score at 20-0.
In the fourth quarter, Gourdet struck again with her second score on a fourth down passs from Gourdet to put the final score in the books.
"Seven is kind of our secret weapon though not for too much longer as she is always the one we can find open and she has great hands," said Lyons. "And, she's just a freshman."
Fleming Island will travel to Tallahassee Chiles on Monday, April 28 in their region semifinal game.