With the crowd thinning out
and his team heading to the locker room after a 42-28 victory
over Traverse City Central Saturday afternoon, Rockford coach
Ralph Munger stood at midfield and smiled..
It turned into a grimace.
Winning a first-round Division
1 playoff game at home clearly was smile-worthy. And the impressive
way the Rams dominated in the first half, scoring on all six
possessions to go on top 42-6 and send the clock running in
the third quarter, would make any coach grin from ear to ear.
The grimace twitched into place
during the second half. That's when the Trojans stopped the
running clock, grabbed the momentum, shut down the Rockford
second-string players and scored on three straight possessions.
Even when the Rams first string
players re-entered the game, they failed to score for the first
time all game.
But critical interceptions
by Rockford's Dan Rothwell and Adam Lewis in the final five
minutes of the game halted TC Central's comeback.
"That first half, it was a
thing of beauty, it truly was," Munger said, smiling again. "Everyone
looked good. It was a good demonstration of what you can do
when everyone is on the same page. Our second kids were kind
of shaky out there in the second half. When you don't play
well, it can get ugly in a hurry.
"I wasn't overly concerned
that we might lose the game, but I certainly don't like standing
there watching that go on. Holy moly, it wasn't pretty. We
have to see if we can develop more depth for next week. "
That's when Rockford, 8-2 and
ranked eighth in the state, hosts Grandville (7-3) at 1 p.m.
Saturday in a district finale. The Bulldogs beat Traverse City
West 35-9 Friday.
"They are one of the hottest
teams in the state without a question," Munger said about Grandville,
which has gone 6-1 since losing 27-21 in overtime to Rockford
on Sept. 12, including beating East Kentwood 42-32.
"They have their motors running
big-time right now."
The Rams' motor was running
smoothly in the first half. Rockford totaled 339 yards in the
first two quarters and did all its scoring.
Spence Klukowski scored first
on a 19-yard run to give the Rams a 7-0 lead. They added five
more touchdowns in the second as Klukowski threw a 17-yard
scoring pass to Bradd VanderVeen, who also ran in an 11-yard
touchdown.
Kyle Osborn also scored from
6 and 8 yards out, and Jeff Dykstra scored on a 3-yard run.
Drew Campanelli booted all six point-after kicks.
Meanwhile, Traverse City Central
(6-4) had 157 yards in total offense and one touchdown -- a
20-yard pass from Mattias Johnson to Jeff Fancy -- in the first
half.
"Well, Rockford is Rockford," said
TC Central coach Kelly Clark. "They are going to come out and
give you everything they've got. They certainly handled us
in the first half. In the second half, they put their twos
in there, they were getting all kinds of kids playing time.
"The thing we were happy to
see is that not only did our kids play with their twos, but
we even did with their ones. We were able to step it up and
get stops like we hadn't done in the first half."
With 1:04 left in the third
quarter, the Trojans' Greg Pinto scored from 20 yards out,
and Ben Amon added the two-point conversion to stop the running
clock.
Rockford fumbled the ensuing
kickoff, and TC Central scored less than one minute later on
a 20-yard run by Erik Burke.
That's when Rockford's starters
returned, but they wound up 1-yard short on fourth down on
the TC Central 33-yard line. Eight plays later, Johnson connected
with Burke on a 44-yard touchdown pass to narrow the score
to 42-28 with 7:15 left in the game.
All that remained were Rockford's
key interceptions.