East St. Louis QB duo unstoppable during victory at Belleville East

East St. Louis football coach Darren Sunkett believes he has two talented quarterbacks who can effectively lead his potent Flyers offense.

On Saturday morning at Charlie Woodford Field, the Belleville East Lancers got to see why.

Junior Kendrick Lyons and sophomore Reese Shanklin combined for six touchdown drives as the Flyers parlayed a 27-point first-half lead into a 40-0 shutout victory over the Lancers in the Southwestern Conference opener for both teams.

Sunkett was pleased with the work of both of his quarterbacks as they battled through sauna-like conditions that prompted school athletic directors to start the game two hours earlier than scheduled.

“Ken’s our quarterback this year and he’s our starter, but we definitely want to get Reece as many reps as we can to get him ready to go,” Sunkett said. “We’ve got two pretty good quarterbacks that we feel real good about.”

Lyons had the East Side offense cooking on its first two drives of the game, finishing the first series with a 67-yard touchdown pass to Christopher GoMiller and then a 28-yard touchdown strike to wideout Armaad Sharp just 6:24 into the game.

Shanklin, who stepped in for injured starter Robert “Pops” Battle last year in the Class 6A championship game, kept things rolling for the Flyers early in the second quarter when he connected with GoMiller on a 28-yard touchdown aerial. Lyons finished the first half out with a 25-yard deep curl pass to Christopher Bennett, Jr, making it 27-0 at the half after the missed extra point attempt.

Ahmad Coleman punched in a 4-yard touchdown run in the third quarter and Shanklin kicked off the running clock for East Side (4-0, 1-0) with a 32-yard touchdown pass to Sharp with 7:39 to go.

It was a good afternoon for Shankin as he got some quality work in during the heat of a game.

“It was really just a lot of motivation for me counting on my guys and making sure we do our jobs and that was pretty much it,” Shanklin said.

While Shanklin and Lyons were dealing, the Flyers defense was dominating. The East Side stop crew made life difficult for East quarterback Kingston Jones, running back Jaedon Beamon and wide receiver James Johnson, Jr.

Led by senior outside linebacker Keandre McClendon, the Flyers recorded their first shutout of the season and looked stout in doing so.

“We made a few little mistakes and was probably the heat in the first half but we had to get back in the AC, cool down then have to come back out ready,” McClendon said. “Every game is a blowout. We expect a blowout every game.”

Sunkett felt like the team had another effective day on the field.

“The overall grade for us, we grade out with a positive,” Sunkett said.

For Belleville East (2-2, 0-1), which fell to Althoff last week, it was another tough day. The Lancers couldn’t find a groove against the always-tough East Side defense.

East Side’s defense held Belleville East to 107 total yards of total offense and just 22 yards on the ground.

“They were better than us today in all facets of the game.” Belleville East coach Michael Harrison said. “We had some drives early where we moved the ball and kind of shot ourselves in the foot and didn’t capitalize early. It’s a tough challenge but at the end of the day their high school kids like we’ve and we’ve got to find a way to compete with them.”