HAYS — Jordan Stout finally has some bragging rights over his new roommate Matt Coursen.
Stout’s West squad defeated Coursen’s East squad, 26-7, on Saturday in the Kansas Shrine Bowl at Lewis Field Stadium.
“I finally beat him in something,” Stout of Madison said with a laugh. “I finally got one on him. It feels pretty good.”
Coursen’s Waverly team had won the 8-Man Division I State football title last year and Coursen had come out on top time, and time again, when the two met on the track this spring.
Stout was part of a West defensive attack that completely shut down the East offense for all but one series in the Kansas Shrine Bowl at Lewis Field Stadium.
Take out the East squad’s lone scoring drive — an eight-play, 88-yard series in the second quarter that tied the game at 7 — and the East gained just 91 yards the rest of the game.
“Our defense was tough,” Stout, a safety, said. “Their offense... we knew they had good players, but as a unit, we stepped it up.”
Coursen was one of the lone offensive highlights for the East squad, as he led the team in rushing with seven carries for 29 yards.
Fittingly, Stout and Coursen — set to be roommates at Emporia State this year, where Coursen will play football and Stout will play basketball — met up once on the playing field during the game.
Stout tackled Coursen after Coursen’s longest run of the night — a 9-yard gain on the East’s only scoring drive.
Stout’s tackle might have saved a Coursen touchdown.
“I kind of juked, but he made a good tackle,” Coursen said. “He made a good tackle on my legs. He’s a great tackler.
“He knew that if he was going to bring me down, he’d have to get my legs out, and that’s what he did.”
One play later, the East struck on a 50-yard touchdown pass from Tyler Herl to Kiara Jones that tied the score at 7 with 3:30 left in the second half for the lone offensive highlight of the night for the East squad.
The West took a 10-7 lead into the locker room at the half, then took control of the game by scoring 16 second-half points to turn what had been a defensive battle into a rout.
The West’s second-half scoring was highlighted by a Shrine Bowl-record 57-yard field goal by Valley Center’s Drew Johnson, a replacement on the West squad who learned of his spot on the team just six days before practice was set to begin.
His big kick put the West up 20-7 with 2:22 left in the third quarter following his 25-yard field goal in the second quarter that gave his team the lead for good.
“When I kicked it, I thought it was good immediately. It felt good off my leg,” Johnson said. “It’s only my fifth field goal I’ve ever attempted in a game.”
Jason Robben of Andale and Jeremy Reed of Great Bend each added touchdowns in the second half, as the West turned to a powerful ground game that wore down the East defense.
Robben finished as the Most Outstanding Player for the West squad, scoring two touchdowns and running for a game-high 86 yards on 16 carries.
“We tried to gang tackle those guys as much as we could,” said West squad linebacker Dillon Cox of Emporia. “We tried to have two or three guys up to tackle to try to bring those guys down. We did all right, but we could have done a lot better.”
The West out-gained the East 271-179 and kept the mistakes to a minimum. The West committed one penalty while the East had seven for 56 yards. Also, the East fumbled five times — only one was lost — while the West had one fumble, which it recovered.
“We had a lot of fumbled snaps and penalties,” Coursen said. “There were a lot of mistakes on our end.”
Shrine Bowl notes
• Emporia’s Dillon Cox was one of the East squad’s four representatives chosen to participate in the opening coin toss at midfield.
• All net proceeds from the game benefited the Shriners Hospitals for Children.
• Cox, Hartford’s Andrew Wiederholt and Olpe’s Jake Miller drew starting nods for the East squad. Cox started at linebacker, Wiederholt was in on the first offensive series as a wing back and Miller started at center.
“That was pretty nice to get the start,” Miller said. “The center to quarterback exchange needed some work, but we played for the kids, and win or lose, they all won.”
Matt Coursen of Waverly came in on the East squad’s first punt, while Madison’s Jordan Stout went in on the third defensive series as a safety for the West squad.
• Wiederholt made it onto the stat sheet when he hauled in a 4-yard pass from Tyler Herl in the second quarter that gave the East squad a first down.
“(The catch) was cool,” Wiederholt said, “but I guarantee I’m going to remember even more the little things that I did wrong. But it was still fun to get that catch.”
• Before the start of the game four skydivers from Skydive Kansas out of Osage City made successful jumps onto the Lewis Field turf.
• The 2008 Kansas Shrine Bowl is set to be held at Welch Stadium in Emporia.