Auburndale wins the line of scrimmage, rolls to shutout win

The Auburndale Eagles controlled the line of scrimmage and, by doing that, controlled the scoreboard as well in a 47-0 blowout win over visiting Rib Lake-Prentice Friday in non-conference football.

Auburndale scored six first-half touchdowns while building a commanding 41-0 halftime lead to improve to 3-1 overall. Rib Lake-Prentice is 0-4 in its games played this season.

“They were strong, athletic and fast on the defensive line,” Rib Lake-Prentice cohead coach Jonah Campbell said. “Early in the game, they wreaked havoc and we were just playing catch up after the first three or four drives and we made more mistakes from then on. We got stuck in a hole from the beginning and couldn’t dig ourselves out.”

Auburndale hit the Hawks with a quick scoring blitz in the first quarter that put the game out of reach in a hurry. Two of the early scores came from running back Terrance Cottrell-Roberson, who had a big night with 143 yards and four touchdowns on just 16 carries.

His first touchdown, a 6-yard run, capped Auburndale’s opening drive. Lucas Yeske ended Rib Lake-Prentice’s next drive with a strip-sack of Hawks’ quarterback Michael Borchardt. The Eagles recovered the fumble and turned that into a 20-yard touchdown run by Cottrell-Roberson. Another sack ended Rib Lake-Prentice’s next drive and a good punt, unfortunately, turned bad when Alex Willfahrt returned it 75 yards for a touchdown that made the score 21-0.

“On our first couple drives, the defensive line just kind of wrecked a couple of plays,” Campbell said. “We didn’t have much time to pass. That was kind of a continuing theme all night.”

With the Hawks’ drives continuing to stall, the Eagles took advantage of good field position and added three more touchdowns in the second quarter.

Cottrell-Roberson scored from 7 yards out to push the lead to 28-0 after Jesse Fowler made his fourth straight extrapoint kick. Quarterback Trayton Weber scored from 5 yards out and Cottrell-Roberson broke free for a 45-yard touchdown before the half.

“He’s pretty shifty and broke a couple of tackles on multiple occasions within one play and was able to get some big chunks of yards at a time,” Campbell said of Auburndale’s top back. “There were a couple of broken plays where we went for long touchdowns.”

The Eagles finished with 438 yards of total offense, including 333 on the ground, where they averaged 9 yards per attempt. Weber was eight of 12 in passing for 105 yards and he gained 66 yards on seven rushing attempts.

Rib Lake-Prentice was able to gain some offensive traction on a couple of later drives and finished with 96 yards of total offense, 83 of which came on the ground. Sam Gumz ran for 60 yards on 12 carries, for a solid 5-yard per carry average. Jordan Yanko gained 37 yards on two attempts.

Borchardt was two of eight for 13 yards. Michael Quednow caught one pass for 8 yards and Dominick Classen had a 5-yard reception.

Defensively, Yanko had five solo tackles and four assisted tackles. Gumz had three solo tackles and three assists and Classen had two solo stops and three assists.

“Toward the end of the first half we put a drive together that ended with a mistake,” Campbell said. “We put a drive together at the start of the second half to see if we could get on the board before the JVs got substituted in and at the end of that drive we also made a mistake. We did some good things. But their defensive line was the driving force behind their success. It was a lot of us getting put on our heels.

“The first three times we ran our best play it went for 2 yards or less,” he added. “The rest of the game that play went for four or more. It was just a matter of seeing something, where to cut, not getting the backside backers or whatever.”

While Rib Lake-Prentice lost on the field, the Hawks got a second straight forfeit win in the Lakeland Conference standings as the week’s originally-scheduled matchup was vacated by Flambeau. Auburndale actually got its third straight forfeit in the Marawood Conference standings.

Officially 2-1 in league play, the Hawks aren’t expecting any more forfeits in their final four Lakeland Conference games, starting with Friday’s matchup in Balsam Lake against the Unity Eagles, which kicks off at 7 p.m. Unity was forced to cancel its game with Stevens Point Pacelli at the last minute this past Friday due to COVID protocols, but as of midweek this Friday’s game is a go.

Unity, which has already lost two games to health protocols this year, is 3-0 in its games played this year, having beaten Amery 19-18, Ladysmith 44-7 and Webster 14-6. Rib Lake-Prentice had a similarly-close game with Webster, losing 8-6 on Sept. 10.

“It’s a team it looks like we can play with,” Campbell said. “We have a comparable opponent so we know what they can do, what they’re capable of.”