Richmond-Burton blows out Sandwich for key Kishwaukee River Conference win

RICHMOND – Richmond-Burton coach Mike Noll called his Rockets’ Week 3 loss to rival Johnsburg a low point of the season.

Friday’s 49-14 runaway win over Sandwich is much closer to where Noll thinks his Rockets should be.

Sophomore running back Hunter Carley continued his strong run of games with a 150-yard, four-touchdown effort, and quarterback Ray Hannemann had some of what Noll called his junior’s best throws of the season – completing 4-of-7 passes for 93 yards and two scores.

“We challenged our guys all week,” Noll said. “They’ve got big kids. They’re big and they’re fast. We said we were going to play low this week, we’re going to play fast this week, we’ve got to get the pad level down. It’s about playing faster and being more physical.”

Richmond-Burton (4-2, 3-1) ran 43 times for 341 yards (7.93 per carry), as the Indians (3-3, 3-1) had no answers defensively.

Sandwich scored the first TD of the game on a Nick Michalek 10-yard run, but the Rockets went on to score the final 28 points of the half.

With the score tied at 7 and Sandwich on R-B’s 13, the Rockets turned away a fourth-down pass attempt, with defensive back Luke Johnson swatting the ball away in the end zone. R-B took over and immediately scored on its next possession, with Hannemann firing a pass up the middle of the field to Oscar Bonilla for a 38-yard TD with 3:45 left in the second quarter.

Sandwich fumbled the ensuing kickoff, with R-B’s Trevor Szumanski knocking the ball loose from kick returner Kai Pon and Logan Molczan jumping on the ball. That led to Carley’s second of four TDs, which gave the Rockets a 21-7 lead with 2:52 to go in the quarter.

The Rockets scored once more before halftime after forcing a punt, driving 61 yards with about a minute left. Wide receiver Jace Nelson grabbed an over-the-shoulder pass from Hannemann for an 18-yard score as R-B took a 28-7 lead into the break.

Sandwich coach Kris Cassie thought this year’s matchup would be much closer after R-B won 49-7 last year.

“I didn’t expect that at all,” Cassie said. “I think they were more physical than us, and we have to do a better job making the adjustments. We just have to play better, period, and we have to match their physicality. We’ve got to learn from it, we’ve got to put it past us and we’ve got to get ready for Woodstock [next week].”

Carley scored TDs on runs of 7, 25, 15 and 4 yards, while sophomore fullback Riley Shea added 79 yards on 13 carries. Nate Moreno added two catches for 29 yards. Bryce Kowall added a 7-yard touchdown run for R-B to close out the scoring.

“That loss against Johnsburg made us kind of realize that we’re not entitled to win,” Carley said. “I think we were just really physical tonight. We had all of our fundamentals down, we limited our mistakes and we capitalized on big plays.”

Sandwich was led offensively by Michalek with 93 yards on 15 carries and a TD. The Indians also scored on a 45-yard touchdown pass from Braden Behringer to Simeion Harris on the team’s first possession of the second half, which at the time cut the score to 28-14.

R-B, though, answered by going 76 yards in six plays, scoring on a 4-yard run by Carley.

Next week’s game against Woodstock North, perfect in the KRC, will be another big test for the Rockets.

“We’re improving every week,” senior defensive end Ryan Wisniewski said. “Everyone is pushing toward the same goal and everyone is being super selfless. We gave them our best tonight and they couldn’t handle it.”