Ridgewood runs past Flanagan-Cornell/Woodland 30-7 at Wood Shed

RURAL STREATOR – The Flanagan-Cornell/Woodland Falcons got off to a pretty good start at the Wood Shed in Friday’s Illinois 8-Man Football Association West Division game against the Cambridge Ridgewood Co-Op, as they forced and recovered a fumble on the second play.

But from there the Falcons turned the ball over on downs at the Spartans’ 18, and five plays later the visitors scored on the first of three big scoring plays to eventually storm to a 30-7 victory.

The outcome puts both teams at 2-1.

Ridgewood senior running back Roy Sandberg did nearly all of the offensive damage in the opening half, as he ran for scores of 9, 31 and 69 and finished with 159 yards on nine carries.

As a team, the Spartans – which held a 22-0 lead at halftime – rushed 36 times for 328 yards while holding the hosts to 133 yards on 36 tries. Ridgewood’s defense held the Falcons to four or fewer yards on 25 plays.

“Defensively for us, I think it really came down to arm tackling tonight,” FCW coach Todd Reed said. “So many times we were in the right position to make a play, and they’d bounce away because we weren’t wrapping them up. I think on each of the first three touchdowns we had our arms around the ballcarrier and just didn’t finish out the tackle.

“It seemed like we get a couple stops in a row to put them in third down and long, but then they’d break a couple tackles and keep the drive going. We just didn’t make the plays when they were there to make.

“Ridgewood’s defense is fast, they flow so well to the ball, and they are physical. They were a more physical football team than we were. We just struggled to put drives together all game. We had times where our running backs weren’t trusting the holes to be there, and that hesitation is all a fast defense like Ridgewood needs to get you stopped.”

After FCW was forced to punt from its 35 on the first possession of the second half, Ridgewood struck again four plays later when QB Owen Anderson passed to a wide-open Ashtin Staley down the middle of the field for a 55-yard TD to make it 30-0 with four minutes to go in the third.

The two sides then took turns stopping the other until FCW’s Leelynd Durbin broke the shutout with a 10-yard scoring run with just under nine minutes to play. Connor Decker added the PAT kick.

FCW was led on the ground by QB Seth Jones’s 47 yards on six carries, while Emmett Horaney ran for 42 yards on eight tries and Durbin 38 on 12. Jones completed 6 of 16 passes for 79 yards, two to Logan Ruddy for 44.

“We believe we have an opportunity to be a pretty good defense, and that was the story for us tonight,” Ridgewood coach Pat Elder said. “The biggest key was all of our guys just did their job, executed and followed their keys. We were a little loose early on FCW’s first couple of possessions when they were able to move the ball, but once our kids settled in, and all they did was trust each other, we really play tough.

“I’m also preaching, if you do your job and you trust the other guys to do theirs, good things are going to happen.”

There were positives from the game, according to Reed.

“While I’m disappointed with the outcome tonight,I also believe Ridgewood is a top-four team in all of eight-man,” he said. “I feel like when we meet again in a couple weeks, if we can clean up the tackling and find a way to move the ball more consistently, I think we’ll be OK. They really didn’t run us over, but they hit us with a couple big plays that we weren’t able to overcome.”

Next week, FCW hosts West Prairie at Woodland, while Ridgewood hosts Peoria Heights.

The Falcons and Spartans will meet again in Week 8 in Cambridge.