Northstars beat Washburn to stay unbeaten

By JASON JUNO

sports@yourdailyglobe.com

Hurley — Hurley improved to 5-0 with a dominating 46-0 victory over Washburn Friday night.

The Northstars haven’t run the ball the way they would like to this season, but they rushed for 313 yards on 34 carries last week, their first time clearing the 300-yard mark this season.

“The bottom line is we found some running game and that’s what we have to get to,” Hurley coach Scott Erickson said. “And, again, the defense was really good, giving up 40 yards for the whole game.”

Hurley has given up just 26 points in four Northwoods East Conference games. None of them have come in the first or third quarters.

Devin Soltis led the Northstars Friday night with a season-high 209 yards on 13 carries and all but one of their touchdowns came on the ground.

“We got a little bit of running game going,” Erickson said.

The Northstars went back to some concepts from the T offense that helped them get all those rushing yards for over a decade before making the move to 8-player football and the option offense.

“We’re running some of our blocking schemes that we used off tackle and perimeter,” Erickson said. “We tried to pull the guards again and we’re going to see if we can’t make a little more hay on that now than we have prior to just running straight zones.”

Neither team got much offense going early Friday night. Brodie Erickson recovered a fumble at the Washburn 22, but a penalty and a bad snap contributed to a turnover on downs despite the good field position.

They forced a Washburn punt, but they fumbled it back to Washburn. After the Castle Guards punted again, Soltis broke free for a 65-yard touchdown run with 1:13 left in the first quarter.

Hurley blew the game open in the second quarter with 24 points for a 32-0 halftime advantage.

Soltis scored his second touchdown, an 83-yard run early in the second quarter. Jack Rowe found Charlie Haanen for a 29-yard touchdown pass and Rowe ran in the last touchdown of the half from two yards out.

Nolan Anderson and Bodyn Gilbertson both had touchdown runs in the second half.

Hurley is home for a second straight week with Chequamegon-Butternut-Mercer coming to town for a 7 p.m. game Friday night.

Chequamegon enters the matchup with a 3-2 record. They defeated Winter-Birchwood 54-14, Prentice 30-22 and Athens 32-0. They fell to Rib Lake 52-16 and Flambeau 60-12.

Hurley beat Flambeau while Chequamegon got routed by the Falcons. Hurley, however, played a much closer game, 12-6, with winless Athens than the Screaming Eagles did.

“We’re going to have another stern test, I think, with Chequamegon,” Erickson said. “They looked good against Athens. We just played Athens a couple weeks and they dismantled Athens, so that’s got me a little concerned here.

“We’ve got to make sure we get ourselves prepared to play and then execute at a high level on Friday.”

Chequamegon senior quarterback Hudson Hilgart leads the team in rushing with 470 yards on 64 carries and seven touchdowns. He’s 20 of 44 through the air for 432 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions.

“I think they got a really good quarterback,” Erickson said. “He can run and he can throw. They ran a lot of counters and reverse actions, so we’re going to have to be disciplined defensively staying home. And they’ve got some pretty good looking linemen.”

It’s homecoming this week in Hurley.

“We’ve lost our last two, so the talk is we can’t use all our energy during the week, we’ve got to save some for Friday night,” Erickson said.

— — —

Washburn 0 0 0 0 — 0

Hurley 8 24 8 6 — 46

First Quarter

Hur — Devin Soltis 65 run (Charlie Haanen run), 1:13

Second Quarter

Hur — Soltis 83 run (Soltis run), 9:44

Hur — Haanen 29 pass from Jack Rowe (Soltis run), 6:29

Hur — Rowe 2 run (Soltis run), 1:11

Third Quarter

Hur — Nolan Anderson 6 run (Rowe run), 6:41

Fourth Quarter

Hur — Bodyn Gilbertson 4 run (run failed), 7:25

Was Hur

First downs 5 10

Rushes-yards 30-2 34-313

Comp-Att-Int 3-13-2 2-4-0

Passing 38 43

Total yards 40 356

Penalties-yards 8-55 6-50

Fumbles-lost 4-1 4-1

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING — Washburn, Tony Chatterton, 8-21, Silas Roode 7-19, Brodi Anderson 1-7, Waylon Witt 1-2, Grayson St. Arnold 1-3, Max Phillips 12-minus 50. Hurley, Devin Soltis 13-209, Jack Rowe 8-51, Bodyn Gilbertson 7-36, Charlie Haanen 2-12, Nolan Anderson 3-12, Everett Laurin 1-minus 7.

PASSING — Washburn, Max Phillips, 3-13-38-0. Hurley, Jack Rowe, 2-4-43-0.

RECEIVING — Washburn, Brodi Anderson, 1-15, Silas Roode, 1-12, FLynn Heinzerling 1-11. Hurley, Devin Soltis 1-14, Charlie Haanen 1-29.