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Daelen Menard, Defense Leads Chaminade-Madonna Past Muscle Shoals

Daelen Menard, Defense Leads Chaminade-Madonna Past Muscle Shoals

Penn State commit John Dunmore caught five passes for 125 yards and two touchdowns, as Chaminade-Madonna came from defeat to beat Muscle Shoals.

Sep 1, 2018 by Kolby Paxton
Daelen Menard: The Forgotten Prospect

MILTON, Ga. — Chaminade-Madonna (FL) finally cut Daelen Menard loose—and it may have just changed the trajectory of its season.

Trailing Muscle Shoals (AL) 14-0 with 10 minutes gone in the first quarter on Saturday, the Lions were stuck in neutral, stubbornly insistent, it seemed, on running the football into the teeth of the Trojans defense.

Alabama-bound Jackson Bratton and the rest of Muscle Shoals’ front seven was winning that battle—repeatedly.

Suddenly, however, everything changed. Why? Because Chaminade abandoned the ground game and went to the air.

With 1:32 to go in the first quarter, Menard found Penn State-bound wide receiver Josh Dunmore on a simple stop route and Dunmore did the rest, spinning out of a tackle and tight-roping the sideline to complete the 20-yard pitch and catch, and put the Lions on the board.

Still, the ultimate decision to throw caution to the wind and trust in the arm of a quarterback that head coach Dameon Jones called “the best quarterback in south Florida” didn’t really happen until the Lions took over possession on the Trojan 46-yard line with 23 seconds left in the first half.

With the previous Menard-to-Dunmore stop route-turned-touchdown still fresh on the mind of the opposing corner, Chaminade went stop-and-go. And, well, that worked out nicely.

Dunmore was wide open. The throw was on the money. And the score was tied.

Out of the break, Menard took over. He peppered Muscle Shoals with a series of short-to-intermediate throws before showing off the full extent of what can be the Daelen Menard Experience.

Menard’s third touchdown pass of the game capped a 10-play, 91-yard drive.

Credit to the Trojans—and, more specifically, to Terrell McDonald, who lined up at both running back and quarterback on offense and played through a lower leg injury—who fought back after surrendering 21 unanswered points.

With a short field following a poor punt, Muscle Shoals went 41 yards in six plays, re-tying the game on a three-yard run by McDonald. 

This game would belong to Chaminade-Madonna, however. The Lions answered with a 69-yard scoring drive that was capped by a three-yard by Willie Davis with 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter—and, from there, the game was put into the hands of Keontra Smith and the Chaminade defense, who slammed the door shut.

With the victory, Chaminade-Madonna improves to 1-1. The Lions will host Blanche Ely (FL) next week. Muscle Shoals drops to 1-1 and travels to Columbia (AL) next week.