Polo dominates up front to defeat Hiawatha in eight-man first-round playoff game

POLO – Missing a big team leader in senior running back/linebacker Avery Grenoble in their first-round playoff game, the Polo Marcos didn’t miss a beat in a 44-8 win over Hiawatha in an eight-man game Friday night.

Brock Soltow ran for 224 yards, Delo Fernandez had 161 more, and Polo (8-2) controlled the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.

“The line was incredible,” Fernandez said. “They got all their blocks right, and it was really smooth. Good blocking all night.”

With Grenoble out after hurting his knee in the final five minutes of practice Thursday, Soltow carried the load behind that impressive offensive line. He ran 20 times for 192 yards and four touchdowns in the first half alone, as the Marcos took a 38-8 lead into the locker room.

“It was huge coming out with a strong start. Our line was a big part. We wanted to set the tone, and it was so big for us to start off like that,” Soltow said. “We worked on that all week, added a new blocking scheme, and it just worked every time, so we kept doing it.”

Most of the plays were just direct snaps to Soltow, who would either hand off to Fernandez or, more often, take it himself and follow the offensive line, as well as Fernandez and Cayden Webster as they served as lead blockers.

On the other side, Hiawatha’s Cole Brantley was bottled up all game long; he had 15 yards on his first nine carries before a bad pitch and a bad snap in punt formation later in the game sent him into the negative. He finished with 13 rushes for minus-8 yards.

“We couldn’t really get our run game rolling. They’re a good team, their D-line is really good, so I think just us struggling to run the ball limited our playbook a little bit,” Hiawatha coach Nick Doolittle said. “We didn’t want to throw the ball every play and become one-dimensional. It just didn’t work out how we wanted it to.”

Polo ran 43 times for 453 yards, while limiting the Hawks to 91 total yards on just 37 plays. Hiawatha (6-4) had five first downs in the game, and three came on its opening possession. Korb ran for 50 yards and was 2 for 10 passing for 44 yards and two interceptions.

“We just really filled the holes well and got to the ball,” Fernandez said of the defensive effort. “Everyone flowed really nicely, and we played Polo football.”

The Marcos opened the game with runs of 16, 32, 9 and 8 yards, with the last one being a Soltow touchdown run for an 8-0 lead just 55 seconds into the game.

Hiawatha answered with a five-play, 57-yard drive capped by Christopher Korb’s 2-yard touchdown run; the big play was a 39-yard pass from Korb to Lucas Norvell.

But Polo didn’t miss a beat. Soltow had back-to-back runs of 19 and 32 yards to cap the next drive for a 16-8 lead, then after a three-and-out, Fernandez sprinted 62 yards for a touchdown on the third play of Polo’s next possession for a 22-8 lead with 1:38 left in the first quarter.

Fernandez had runs of 32, 62 and 38 yards in the game, and had averaged 20.1 yards per carry as he finished with 161 yards on just eight rushes.

“It was amazing how much we came together as a team,” Fernandez said. “I ran out there for Avery, don’t want it to be his last game. We were just trying to keep the season alive.”

Soltow intercepted a fourth-down pass to end Hiawatha’s next series, and returned it to the Hawks’ 33-yard line. That four-and-a-half-minute drive ended when Soltow’s fourth-down pass up for grabs was intercepted in the end zone, but Polo forced another three-and-out and Soltow returned the punt 28 yards to the Hiawatha 27.

After a holding penalty called back a touchdown on the Marcos’ first play, Soltow ran for 37 yards on the next three carries, capping the short drive with an 18-yard sprint for a 30-8 lead with 3:08 left in the half.

“He’s a really good player. He always falls forward somehow,” Doolittle said of Soltow. “We missed some opportunities in the backfield, and that hurts. We just couldn’t grab that momentum.”

Hiawatha didn’t convert on a fourth down, and Polo took over at the 44 with 2:10 to play in the half. A 29-yard pass from Soltow to Webster set up the Marcos at the 18, and Soltow sprinted in from 14 yards two plays later for a 38-8 lead at the break.

The teams traded possessions for most of the second half. Soltow tacked on his final touchdown run on the first play of the fourth quarter, capping a nine-play, 63-yard drive with a 14-yard TD run for the final margin. Each team had two possessions after that, with the first three being turnovers on downs, then Polo got a 57-yard run from Gage Zeigler to the Hiawatha 5 with about 2:30 to play, and the Marcos went into victory formation to run out the clock.

“It was tough losing Avery, and I really missed him out there,” Soltow said. “But we didn’t miss a beat. We looked great tonight.”