Football: North Shore Country Day can’t hang with Forreston

Updated: November 5, 2011 10:01PM

Forreston ran over North Shore Country Day 53-15, in the second round of Class 1A playoffs on Saturday night in Forreston. Hunter Hake scored four touchdowns and gained 151 yards on 21 carries to lead the Cardinals.

“We did our thing,” said Cardinals coach Dennis Diduch. “We didn’t do anything special. They were trying to overcompensate, but they were mismatched by size. They were trying to guess what side we were going and we took advantage of that.”

The Cardinals (10-1) scored on its first possession, marching 64 yards with Hake scoring his first touchdown of the game on a 19-yard run with 2:11 into the game.

Ayo Okesanya (93 yards on 16 carries) brought the Raiders back on an eight-yard run to tie the score, 7-7, with 2:57 left in the first quarter. However, Hake came back 17 seconds later with a 51-yard run for a touchdown to give the Cardinals the lead 13-7 after one quarter.

Hake and Felix Romero (71 yards on four carries) scored in the second quarter on runs of 19-yards and 20-yards to give the Cardinals the lead 26-7 at the half.

The Cardinal defense shut down the middle of the field to the Raiders (9-2) running game forcing Steve Smith to throw 42 passes in the game completing 21 for 139 yards. Most of his passes were outside screens to Zach March (12 receptions for 86 yards and one touchdown).

“We had a pretty good feeling that our two inside guys (Tanner Bronkema and Torey Smice) in the four-man front would be able to eat up the interior,” said Diduch. “That was our game plan.”

The Cardinals gained 427 yards on the ground. Quarterback Brett Carlson needed to threw only two passes completing one for 24 yards.

“Our lineman just took care of business,” said Cardinals running back Adam Akins (132 yards on seven carries). “We tried to hang on to the ball as much as we could but big plays just kept happening.”

The Cardinals continued to run over and around the Raiders in the second half. Akins scored twice, Hake added his fourth, and Romero ran for his second to seal the win.

“We battled as hard as we could,” said Raiders coach Jim Deuble. “You have to acknowledge they are a pretty good football team. We didn’t execute some things as well as we wanted to and paid the price for it.”

The Cardinals move on to play Dakota in the quarterfinals at Dakota.

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