Rochelle rides quick start to 64-10 win over Ottawa

OTTAWA – Rochelle’s Grant Gensler took Friday night’s opening kickoff against Ottawa 76 yards to the Pirates’ 9, and the following play fullback Roman Villalobos ran the ball up the middle for a touchdown before adding a 2-point conversion run for an eight-point lead just 18 seconds in.

The Hubs then scored three more TDs on their next five plays from scrimmage of the first quarter and added two more conversion runs to craft a 30-point lead after the opening quarter on the way to a 64-10 Interstate 8 Conference triumph at King Field.

Rochelle (7-1, 4-1) also forced three Pirates punts in the opening period and blocked two, one each by Gensler and Ethan Goodwin.

Villalobos added a 19-yard TD run in the first, while Gensler scored on a 4-yard dash and sophomore Dylan Manning on a 30-yard run. Villalobos added another conversion run and quarterback Carson Lewis a 2-point pass to Jack Pavlak to make it 30-0 after the opening 12 minutes.

“I think when you get later into any season, there are still things you have to continue to work on,” Rochelle coach Kyle Kissack said. “I think these kids have really embraced that idea, and they know we still have a lot of work to do. We want to keep playing for as long as we can, and to do that we are going to have to keep striving to get better every week.

“We had some things we wanted to clean up from the past couple of weeks as far as our schemes go, and I thought we made pretty good progress. I also thought our defense in the first half was pretty good as well.”

The Hubs added two Gensler TD runs – from the 11 and the 2 – while Manning, who finished with 132 yards on just six carries, ripped off a 50-yard scoring run.

Ottawa’s Lucas Farabaugh ended the first half kicking a 41-yard field goal, the fourth longest in program history to make it 52-3 at halftime.

Rochelle finished the night with 333 yards on 28 rushing attempts, with Gensler going for 42 on six and Villalobos 28 on two.

Rochelle added two TDs in the running-clock second half, a 1-yard run by Jackson Smith and a 73-yard run by Mark Green.

Ottawa (1-7, 0-5) scored its final points in the fourth when QB Mark Munson (12-of-19 passing for 68 yards) connected with Owen Sanders from 20 yards out.

The Pirates finished with 148 total yards, with running back Jace Veith running 16 times for 77 yards.

“Rochelle is a very, very good program, and they are playing some of the best football they’ve played all season right now,” Ottawa coach Chad Gross said. “They’ve been man-handling teams, really good teams in our conference, up front on both sides of the ball, and you saw that again here tonight. They just explode off the snap. If you’re a person that loves to watch a team run the ball, and run it using the wing-T, they would be a team you’d want to watch. They run the ball as well as anyone in the state.

“Their fullback is a load, their wingbacks run extremely hard and are quick, and their quarterback is very underrated. You put that along with an offensive line that just moves people, and you can see why they consistently rush for at least 300 yards a game.

“It’s just a clinic on running the football.”

Rochelle closes out the regular season next week hosting Chicago Heights Marian.

Ottawa plays at St. Bede. It will be the first meeting between the Pirates and the Bedans since Sept. 12, 1980.