Batavia wins thriller at Lake Park

Batavia head football coach Dennis Piron knows he’s in a good situation.

“You couldn’t have a better situation than Batavia High School (to coach at),” Piron said.

After Friday’s 33-29 thrilling victory of Lake Park, Piron is coaching and directing his team to hopefully more great situations as the Bulldogs became playoff eligible.

Piron, who is still undefeated during the regular season as the head coach of the Bulldogs, said the play of his lineman and the willingness of his running backs to grind out yards were key to their victory.

“Honestly, it was a great high school football game,” Piron said.

Every time Lake Park quarterback Zach Gehant connected with receiver Scott Filip or Kevin Teglia, Batavia signal-caller Micah Coffey answered with ease.

Although all three of Coffey’s touchdown passes went to his top receiver in Zach Strittmatter.

“We were setting up our plays with the run, and the safety went up to the line thinking it was a run, so we snuck that one by them on the first one,” said, Strittmatter, who had a game-high seven catches for 111 receiving yards. “Then the other two were just Micah making amazing throws and me just helping him out and going to get the ball.”

Opportunities were abound for Lake Park to take a hold of the game, whose tough schedule has delivered the Lancers three straight losses.

With 3:29 left to play in the first half, a botched handoff from Gehant to running back Zach Thompson gave Batavia momentum. Roughly a minute later, the Bulldogs capitalized off the Lancers’ mishap on offense, taking a 20-14 lead heading into halftime on a Coffey-to-Strittmatter touchdown pass.

“Our tailback slipped — it was a draw — so our quarterback had a blind handoff and that was a big momentum change because we had them on the ropes,” said Lake Park head coach Chris Roll.

For Lancers’ receiver Scott Filip and his teammates, they’ll need to push through another hard loss and look to give a four-quarter effort against their next opponent.

“We realize you gotta play to the very end,” Filip said. “What Coach Roll always says, ‘You gotta play till Hell freezes over, and we gotta play on the ice.’ It’s just saying you can’t let games end up the way like they did today, and you gotta play all the way through to the fourth quarter.”