Rockford runs over West Ottawa with strong second half, 35-13,
in MLive.com Game of the Week
Jeff Chaney | The Grand Rapids Press, November 05, 2010 11:44
p.m.
ROCKFORD -- After a sluggish first half, the Rockford
football team was looking for a little spark in its Division
1 district championship game against visiting West Ottawa on
Friday night.
That spark came from an unexpected source as 5-foot-8, 180-pound
junior fullback Brady Gent ran wild against the Panthers in the
second half to help the Rams win 35-13 in front of a packed crowd
at Ted Carlson Memorial Stadium.
The district championship was Rockford’s 11th. The Rams
will host Howell in regional competition at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Howell beat Holt 29-7 in their district championship Friday.
“I have never had a game like that on varsity,” Gent
said. “It was all my line. They opened up some big holes,
and all I had to do was run through them.”
With his team trailing 13-7 at halftime, Gent found several
holes in the second half.
He began the half with a 58-yard run to the West Ottawa 2-yard
line on Rockford’s second play from scrimmage, and scored
two plays later on a 1-yard plunge.
Gent didn’t slow down from there, finishing with 12 carries
for 142 yards and three touchdowns.
It was a far cry from the first half, when the Rams offense
mustered 117 yards, including almost half that total on Rockford’s
only scoring play before intermission, a 49-yard touchdown pass
from quarterback Mark LaPrairie to Neil VanderLaan.
“They were running us down from the inside out in the
first half,” Rockford coach Ralph Munger said. “So
we kept looking and probing, and I found what I was looking for.
And the kids did a good job of executing it.”
That play was an inside counter dive to Gent that worked just
about every time the Rams used it in the second half.
On the other side of the field, West Ottawa was dealing with
poor field position in the second half and an offense that could
not get going.
The Panthers had only 77 second-half yards, including 39 on
a late pass play.
“We had terrible field position in the second half,” West
Ottawa coach Jim Caserta said. “We couldn’t get out
of our own end.”
To make matters worse, West Ottawa was without starting running
back Zac Boersema, who played two series but had to leave the
game because of a sore ankle he injured in last week’s
win at Grand Haven.
Boersema’s backup, Jackson Brown, also left later in the
game because of injury, leaving the Panthers short-handed.
“It would have been better if we had (Boersema),” Caserta
said. “You take a 1,000-yard rusher out, and that’s
a weapon. Losing him made us change our offense, and that kind
of made us more one-dimensional.”
That one dimension was senior quarterback Desmond Morgan, who
rushed for 63 yards in the first half, but was limited to 26
in the second half.
West Ottawa sophomore kicker Bryan Holmes, the hero of last
week’s win against Grand Haven, had another big game Friday,
kicking field goals of 39 and 30 yards, as well as several long
punts.
