Duo leads all Cedar County athletes in all-purpose yards
CEDAR COUNTY - Two quarterbacks in the county had big seasons on the stat sheet, leading their teams in passing, rushing and tackles.
Izac Reifenrath, a senior at Laurel-Concord-Coleridge, and Landon Wieseler, a senior Wynot Public Schools, both attained over 2,000 total yards of offense this season.
Reifenrath and Wieseler were the only athletes in the county to reach such a milestone.
Reifenrath led the county with 1,63 yards through the air and 817 on the ground. He also led his team with 93 tackles.
“I actually set a goal that I wanted to pass for 1,000 yards and rush for 500, and I accomplished both of those,” said Reifenrath. “As a team, we set a goal to make the playoffs and we did that as well.”
Wieseler had 1,391 passing yards and 728 rushing yards this season. He also led his team in tackles with 84 tackles.
Wieseler admitted he does not really pay much attention to his stats during the season, and was unsure of what the numbers mean as season totals.
“I guess I don’t really look at stats too much,” said Wieseler. “I’m not really sure how much is a lot or how much you would strive for to be really good. “
Both Reifenrath and Wieseler led their teams in all three categories - passing yards, rushing yards, and defensive tackles.
Reifenrath and Wieseler had the top two passing yards in the league. One other quarterback had over 1,000 yards - Shaye Morten of Hartington-Newcastle.
Reifenrath also led the county with 44 total touchdowns. He had 25 through the air, 18 on the ground, and one kickoff return for a score. Wieseler threw 15 in the air and scored 11 times on the ground.
Both LCC and Wynot lost in the first round of the playoffs - LCC in Class D1, and Wynot in Class D2. LCC rebounded from a 1-7 season the year before and one of his highlight passes on the season was in the final seconds of regulation in round one of the playoffs.
“Coach called hitch and go’s and they had triple coverage on [Noah Schutte],” said Reifenrath. “So I just threw it to the back pylon and he just jumped up, snagged it, and put a foot in the end zone to tie it and go to overtime.”
For Wieseler, what some quarterbacks would find as a challenge he excelled at, having a new head coach. Wynot’s head coach Steve Heimes was deployed this fall, giving head coaching duties to Steve Wieseler.
Steve is Landon’s father, and he said there was a great connection that helped the two make in-game adjustments.
I really relied a lot on him to do a lot of things,” said Steve Wieseler. “A lot of it was on the fly with adjustments we made at halftime or right in the spur of the moment. We kind of had a unique connection where I could mouth something to him and he would know what I was talking about.”
It is impressive to have two quarterbacks from the same county find such success by leading their respective teams in tackles as well pass passing and rushing yards. More impressive potentially, is the fact that both Laurel-Concord-Coleridge and Wynot are both eight-man football teams. Playing on an 80-yard field compared to 100-yards can make it harder to gain total yards to this extent.
Overall though, both players deflected a lot of credit to the rest of their team, especially their linemen. Both Reifenrath and Wieseler also now look ahead to the basketball season this winter.