It was Thursday October 17th and the youthful Rebels were back in the friendly confines of the Pit. We have not played at home since September 16 so it was time for us to defend our home turf against the Denver Cyclones. Denver has a good class of Freshmen that they are pretty proud of so we knew they would be tough and ready to play. We had also seen most of them earlier in the year in our JV victory over them. They have some big kids that are pretty athletic but we were ready.

We received the opening kickoff and on the third play from scrimmage behind some fine blocking, Parker Bown went 62 yards for a score and we would never look back. We stopped Denver on their first possession so they had to punt to us. Parker fielded the punt, made a move, and got to our wall left and was escorted by our wall of blockers 54 yards for an untouched TD. It was probably one of the best returns we had set up all year. It was perfectly executed. Four minutes into the contest we were up 14-0 and doing many things very well. We continued our dominance in the first half putting together a long drive capped off by a Dmitriy Strohbehn 3 yard TD plunge to make the score 20-0 with about four minutes to go before the half. We again stopped Denver and had the ball back with about two minutes to go. Coach Trunck called a perfect set of plays for our two minute offense and got us down to the 7 yard line with 3 seconds to go. We lined up and kicked a 25 yard field goal to end the half at 23-0.

The second half went very quickly as Denver made a couple of plays and got a few first downs. They ran the ball better against us the second half so the clock moved rather quickly. We still did not allow them to score until midway through the fourth quarter. We really didn’t get much going offensively the second half but our first half performance held up as we moved to 4-0 on the year with an impressive 23-6 victory. It was a very good effort by all 18 guys over a pretty darn good football team. This sets us up nicely for our showdown with Dike New Hartford on October 22.

Parker finished his night with 215 yards on the ground, a 25 yard field goal, and 2 PAT kicks. Erik Knaack ran for 42 yards and threw for 37 yards on 5 completions. Matt Roeding hauled in 3 balls for 23 yards. Jake Mohlis caught 1 ball for 9 yards and Dmitriy made 1 grab for 5 yards to complete our offensive totals. Joe Baugus had a career high with 10 tackles to lead the way. Tyler Pierce had another solid night at linebacker with 8 stops followed closely by another linebacker, Slade Wager with 6. Spencer Goos added 5, Parker and Alex Tscherter 4, Matt, Jed Peterson, Jaden McGhee, and Joseph Pepe 3, Carter Murphy and Bryce Clark 2, Hunter Beachler, Jacob Walters, and John Edler also each made a tackle to aid our defensive cause. This was a good win for us and will give us confidence moving forward. We are a good football team and have shown improvement throughout the year. We are playing our best football of the year right now.