SEBRING — The McDonald Blue Devils made a statement to start the 2020 high school football season.

They wasted no time in jumping ahead of the Sebring Trojans 40-0 at halftime and cruised to a 40-6 win in the season-opener for both.

Dom Schadl racked up 119 yards rushing and scored three touchdowns to propel the Devils’ offensive explosion. He added 67 yards and a touchdown on 3-for-4 passing.

“I just want to thank my line and my guys on the edge,” Schadl said. “They did a good job all night of blocking and getting open downfield, so it was an all-around good effort. But we’re not satisfied yet, so we have to improve for next week.”

“Dom’s gotten better,” coach Dan Williams said. “We really tried working on his throwing in the off-season and he has become a better passer for us. I think he only had one incompletion tonight possibly. He has come along and we need that. We need him to be able to put the ball in the air and become a dual-threat. Last year he was more one dimensional. We’re looking for big things from him throughout the year.”

While Schadl and the Devils’ offense was rolling, their defense was just as impressive. The Devils limited the Trojans to just 76 total yards in the first half, and 145 in the game.

The Trojans did not mount a consistent drive until the third quarter when they scored with 1:09 remaining. The Devils forced the Trojans into five turnovers.

“That was the big thing for us,” Trojans coach Matt Seidel remarked. “We put an emphasis on that (not turning the ball over), but it’s real hard when you have low numbers to practice that. It’s just some ball security issues, like making sure the ball is in the right hand. We’ll take care of that in practice.”

“I think we had a good game all around tonight, defensively and offensively,” Schadl said. “Up front, we applied pressure and opened things up.”

“I thought early on we played pretty solid with it being our first look at an opponent,” Williams stated. “We didn’t scrimmage last week, so our kids were pretty hungry to get out against somebody other than ourselves.”

Nathan Gilligan scored from two yards out on the Devils’ opening possession to give them an early 7-0 lead.

The Devils then capitalized on a Trojans’ fumble as Schadl hit Dominic Carkido on a 20-yard scoring pass for a 14-0 lead just 14 seconds later.

Schadl scampered 54 yards for a touchdown on the Devils’ next possession and McDonald add a defensive touchdown on a Carkido 61-yard interception return to boost the margin to 28-0 at the end of the first quarter.

“Carkido had a great night,” Williams said. “The pick-six on the defensive side, and he made a couple good runs early and a nice pass catch over top of a kid for a touchdown. He is a weapon, a 6-foot-4 kid with big rangy arms, and long length. He is a threat. We have some skill, so we are going to try to spread it around as much as we can.”

Schadl added touchdown runs of 7 and 1 yards to close out the Devils’ scoring.

The Blue Devils put on a good display after all the pre-season questions with the pandemic.

“I’m extremely happy,” Schadl said. “Especially with this being my senior year. I get to play in front of my family and play with my teammates one last time. I’m happy to suit up and play on Friday nights.”

“Our inexperience and our youth really caught up to us tonight,” Seidel remarked. “Thirteen guys never played in a varsity football game until tonight. So that’s always going to be a little bit of a culture shock. I’m proud of the way we came out in the second half and executed our offense and did well on defense. We stayed fundamentally sound.”

Next Friday, the Devils will entertain Lowellville and the Trojans will play host to Mineral Ridge.