Eight of nine passing for 195 yards with two touchdown passes and two touchdown runs would be a respectable game for most quarterbacks. For East Union’s Luke Weaver on Friday night, that was an outstanding first quarter in the Lancers’ 63-15 pounding of visiting McNair in non-league action at Dino Cunial Field.

“We’re still not there yet,” Weaver said. “We executed decent tonight but there is still a lot of room for improvement.”

The Eagles (0-2) returned the opening kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown, but after that it was the Weaver Show. The Lancers senior ran for a 5-yard touchdown and followed that with a 57-yard scoring gallop. Weaver appeared to be down midway through the long run until he straight-armed his defender into the dirt and continued unmolested into the end zone.

Weaver (17 of 24 passing, 376 yards, two touchdowns; five carries, 74 yards, two touchdowns) then decided to give his arm a workout, throwing touchdown passes of 21 yards to Dylan Lee and 25 yards to Nick Luna (three receptions, 64 yards). Kainoa Ontai pulled in four catches for 86 yards, Jacob Toste made six catches for 63 yards and Johntae Maggard tallied 86 yards on six carries with scoring runs of 8 and 10 yards. Emilio Perez added a 1-yard scoring plunge.  

“When everyone gets to play and the guys that are usually in get to pump them up, that’s what you want,” East Union coach Mike Kuhlenz said. “When everyone gets in that means you probably handled business.

“We had some mistakes — they returned the opening kickoff back and that wasn’t in the game plan. We played sloppy in the beginning and had quite a few penalties and we need to clean that up before going into league. You can’t make those mistakes in the (Valley Oak League).”

Lee was Weaver’s favorite target, pulling in seven first-half passes for 164 yards with that 21-yard touchdown.

“I was just trying to do my job and catch every ball thrown at me,” Lee said. “Weaver makes me look good, so I like to try and make him look good.

“He puts the ball in the right spots and he makes it look easy.”

McNair put together one decent drive in the first half, getting to the East Union 10-yard line. Unfortunately for the Eagles, their quarterback lost the ball on the next play when he was readying to throw with the Lancers’ Damian Gonzalez falling on the loose ball. The Eagles scored late in the fourth quarter on a 20-yard pass.

“The ball just came out of his hand,” Gonzalez said. “I just did my job and jumped on it.”

With the game long decided by halftime with East Union (2-1) leading 49-7 going into the running-clock third quarter, Ontai give the hometown crowd something to cheer about when he took the second-half kickoff and bolted up the sideline in front of his bench, breaking no less than three tackles on the way to a 70-yard touchdown.

“They returned the opening kick and that was good on their part,” Ontai said. “When the second half started I called the KOR together and I told them to hold their blocks for three seconds and we would run it back.”

Payton Graham (five carries, 85 yards) came off the bench for the Lancers in the second half, carrying the ball for all three plays on East Union’s only drive of the third quarter, covering 55 yards in those three plays capped by a 23-yard touchdown run right up the middle.

This was a game the Lancers dominated from the second play of the game on, racking up 640 yards of offense to 155 for McNair.