via FridayNightLights.com
Article by Todd Porter
LEXINGTON TWP. Big-time college football recruits feel pain, too. Just ask Alden Hill, who found himself gasping for air after the first two plays from scrimmage of the season. Welcome back to reality.
But Hill, the Tennessee recruit, spent the rest of the night making sure St. Thomas Aquinas huffed and puffed.
Photos of the Marlington vs. St. Thomas Aquinas game
Hill broke two long touchdown runs and finished with an obscene amount of yards in the Dukes’ 46-19 win over the Knights on Friday night at Marlington Stadium.
“I took a step back on the option fake and I wasn’t watching and I got nailed right in the stomach,” Hill said. “I wasn’t paying attention. I just forgot. But I remembered real quick.”
Hill broke his own school record for rushing yards in a game. He gained 315 yards on 20 carries and scored five touchdowns. His old record was 279 set last year.
“I did energize,” Hill said of getting the wind knocked out of him. “I think any time you’re laying on the turf you want to make sure you get up and make them feel it then.”
Hill broke the record on a 57-yard run.
“We’re smart enough to know to get out of the way of good players,” Marlington head coach Ed Miley said. “We get out of the way of great players and let them play. If you feed them enough, they’re gonna make plays.”
At halftime, the Dukes had just 17 offensive plays. It seemed like Hill broke more tackles than that, but he only had seven carries in the first half.
No matter.
He still gained 208 yards on those seven carries, a sick 30-yard-per-carry average. Hill scored twice on oxygen-sucking runs. The first was a 71-yard TD run in which Hill ran between the tackles, lowered his shoulder to shake two tackles and then broke to the outside.
“Tennessee doesn’t recruit bad players,” Aquinas head coach Tim Budd said.
Prior to that run, Aquinas and Marlington combined for a grand total of 38 offensive yards, but had 20 points on the board. Sophomore Caleb Simmons returned the opening kickoff 83 yards for a 7-0 Marlington lead. The Dukes went up 13-0 after Clayton Staib’s pick-six, which he returned 42 yards for the score.
Aquinas got a shot in the arm from GlenOak transfer Bryan Wilkins. He caught the ensuing kickoff and returned it 87 yards to the Marlington 2. Wilkins powered in from the 1 two plays later to put Aquinas on the board, 20-6.
On the Dukes first play from scrimmage, then, Hill took a counter handoff. It appeared as though he was down, but he spun off a tackle and raced 91 yards to the end zone for a 26-6 lead.
“I was pretty gassed after that,” Hill said. “But it was fun.”
Aquinas closed the first half with the only legitimate scoring drive of the half. The Knights ran 6:27 off the clock on a 62-yard drive than spanned 13 plays and included three fourth-down conversions, the final one going for a TD. Quarterback Tyler Moeglin hit tight end Joel Rich for an 11-yard TD pass. Moeglin finished with 110 yards in the air.
“We didn’t give up a sustained drive and we’re down two scores early in the game,” Budd said. “Give our kids credit for fighting their butts off to get back in it. I thought we were in it right up until they scored 40 points.”
With about six minutes left in the game, Aquinas had negative-1 yard rushing. That all changed when Moeglin took a keeper 83 yards into the end zone with 6:01 left. But the Knights had a lot of ground to make up and still trailed, 40-19.
Then Hill saw another crease, slipped through the middle of the line of scrimmage and coasted into the end zone. A record-breaking night he won’t soon forget.
“I don’t blame the guy who hit me,” Hill said. “It woke me up. We know because we have Marlington on our jerseys we’re all targets this year."
