Rockford Rams 53, West Ottawa Panthers 0

Rockford quiets Panthers with overwhelming 53-0 victory
Non-conference loss sees West Ottawa beat soundly by opponent
By LEE LAMBERTS

Jim Caserta was a man of few words Thursday. The West Ottawa coach didn't say a lot following his team's 53-0 non-league loss to Rockford at Ted Carlson Memorial Stadium. There really was not much to talk about. " Every way you could beat a team, that's how they beat us," Caserta said. "We didn't do anything on offense or defense or special teams. And if there was any other way they could have beat us, they would have beat us that way, too.

"Seriously, that's what happened. From the first series on, they outplayed us. There wasn't anything else to it. We made way too many mistakes and there's not much else to say." West Ottawa (1-1 overall) tried to make a game of it early, recovering an onside kick near midfield to get an early burst of momentum. That, however, went nowhere as the Rams stuffed the Panthers on three straight plays and forced a punt. From there it was all downhill ... or at least it seemed that way to the Rockford players.
Zach Breen scored on a 14-yard run and Steve Kamphuis kicked the extra point to make it 7-0.
West Ottawa fumbled the ball away and Rockford scored again, this time on Kurtis Salter's 53-yard run. Those touchdowns came just over a minute apart and gave the Rams a 14-0 lead at the end of the first quarter.

Four more touchdowns followed in the second quarter as West Ottawa used every way possible to give Rockford the ball. A couple of punts, a failed fake punt and, finally, a fumble recovery that was run in for a touchdown, all in the final six minutes of the second quarter, made the score 41-0 at halftime. Even Rockford coach Ralph Munger was surprised, despite his team's strong 2-0 start. " I wouldn't have believed that if somebody had told me," Munger said.

"I sensed early that we were going to be on top of our game. Plus our kids love to play at home."
Rockford's dominance carried over to the statistics sheet. The Rams had 400 yards of total offense compared to 87 yards for the Panthers. West Ottawa's offensive highlight was Devon Townsend's running -- 12 carries for 41 yards.

Caserta wants to remember this game about as much as he wanted to talk about it. " We want to put this behind us as quickly as possible because it doesn't get any easier," Caserta said, thinking ahead a bit to next Friday's home game with Muskegon. "We're not going to quit, but it's going to take us a little while. We're young, we'll come back and we'll get better."