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."