Lorenz giving Monadnock football power running game it needed

There is a specific type of player that comes to mind when thinking about the Monadnock Regional High School football team.

Even the Huskies coach, Rob Lotito, believes that to be the case.

"We haven’t had a real downhill runner here for like three years," Lotito said. "We’re known for that."

So when injuries started to pile up for Monadnock a couple of weeks ago, Lotito and the coaching staff decided to make a change at the running back position. Senior co-captain Jack Lorenz found a new jersey and move from guard to the back field, and after a couple of weeks of breaking him in, Lorenz burst on to the scene.

In last weekend's 52-8 thrashing of Campbell, Lorenz carried 30 times for 361 yards and five touchdowns, with four of those scores coming in the second half and going for big gains.

"It’s a rivalry game, and pretty much year in and year out, no matter what skill level both teams are, when we’re against Campbell, it’s always a great game," he said. "Coming off the loss to Trinity (on Sept. 24), we’ve been feeding off that for the last two weeks. This was the game that we needed to win, to send a message to the entire league, and just give us a better ranking for the playoffs. Everybody knew how important this was."

Lorenz started getting carries against Inter-Lakes/Moultonborough, and after falling behind early against Trinity, the Huskies weren't able to run the ball as much. Monadnock didn't need Lorenz to do much in its win over ConVal, but almost from the opening kickoff, the senior, along with Ethan Brown, dominated in the ground game.

"Jack is one of those guys who always played guard and linebacker, and I just woke up, and said if we could play him at running back, it would be a game-changer," Lotito said. "We were going to do it earlier in the year, but we had some injuries, and we couldn’t do it. Finally, after the Trinity game, we decided to live and die with it, and we’ve been living."

Monadnock had the ball for 16:47 in the first half against the Cougars on the way to a 20-0 halftime lead, but after Campbell scored on its first possession of the second half, the Huskies went on a 10-play drive to go up 26-8.

The Cougars tried to get back into it, but each of their next three drives stalled and Lorenz wasted little time in digging a deeper hole.

First, after the Huskies made a fourth-down stop at their own 40, Lorenz broke free for a 60-yard touchdown run on the next play. Then, after another unsuccessful fourth-down attempt for the Cougars, Lorenz went 77 yards for a score on the next play, making it 39-8.

He added touchdown runs of 65 and 29 yards before the game was over, helping Monadnock run for 493 yards as a team.

Not bad for someone who hadn't played the position since middle school.

"I played running back in middle school but I’d been playing on the line," Lorenz said. "I’ve always been pretty big and I filled out a little bit my sophomore year. Got in the weight room and started eating a little more.

"I felt natural back there. It’s been going good."

Monadnock will look to pick up another win Friday night, when it hosts Kearsarge in its final home game of the regular season.