DECATUR - Football synergy is a difficult thing to acquire with only a week's worth of practice.

And, as you might imagine, Saturday's 18th annual Order of the Eastern Star All-Star football game had some plays that would've made the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers cringe.

But a lifetime worth of chemistry doesn't disappear in a few months, either. The East team used that to its advantage when Tuscola's John Wienke found teammate Clayton Meyer for a touchdown in the second quarter.

Wienke eventually threw one more, but that score was all the East needed in a 13-5 victory over the West at Millikin's Frank M. Lindsay field.

Long drives weren't found on this day. The touchdown pass to Meyer capped off a three-play, 16-yard drive that was set up by an interception.

"Having two Tuscola receivers there in a pro-style formation really helped. The whole week (Champaign Central coach Dave Jacobs) was really good about letting us do our own thing. If we needed to call an audible, we could sneak in there and call one if we needed to," Wienke said.

But the play to Meyer was scripted.

"It was one of the same routes we were familiar with," Wienke said. "We stuck it in there and got it done."

He finished with 116 yards and two touchdowns. The other went to Cerro Gordo's Chris N'tor-Ue with 43 seconds left in the first half.

The West team didn't complete its first pass (to itself) until midway through the fourth quarter, yet it nearly tied the game in the waning seconds.

Springfield Southeast's Adrian Muex sacked Wienke for a safety late in the third quarter, cutting the lead to eight, and the teams traded possessions until the West took over with 2:06 left at its own 37.

What followed was organized chaos.

"We had people coming in everywhere, and we were just trying to put together a drive and get into the end zone," said Sangamon Valley's Cody Acree, the West team's MVP. "Everybody was fighting real hard, and everybody was working. It's something that we're all used to."

Springfield's David Lee, Lincoln's Jacob Harnacke and Central A&M's Anthony Tintori rotated at quarterback on the 10-play drive. Harnacke had Warrensburg-Latham's Luke Butts open in the end zone on third-and-1 from the 26, but the pass was a bit too high and Butts couldn't haul it in.

A false start on fourth down pushed the ball back 5 yards, and West failed to convert.

"We had a shot. I thought our kids played well," West coach Eric Hurelbrink said. "To come down and have a chance at the end to score and possibly tie, it's all I could ask for. It was a lot of fun, especially to work with kids from the Okaw, and kids from Springfield and Bloomington that we don't get to see."

The fun continued afterward. Coaches and teammates gathered in groups for one last round of pictures before officially going their separate ways. The East team even did the hokey-pokey (only the right foot) as a victory celebration.

"I think I was probably in the fifth grade (when last doing the hokey-pokey)," Wienke said. "But it felt good though."

Todd Engle can be reached at tengle@herald-review.com or 421-7970.