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Warriors defeat Bennington, 35-20

Staff writer

The Marion High School football season has not always been easy for senior quarterback Dillon Richmond.

In the Warriors first game at Lyons, Richmond fumbled two snaps. Last week against Inman, Richmond struggled with the option pitch, forcing Randy Regnier to fumble the ball in the first half against the Teutons.

The Marion quarterback said he has struggled with the reads in the Warriors triple option attack; after the ball is snapped Richmond has the choice of handing the ball off to fullback Les Riggs, running it himself, or pitching the ball to another running back, whether it be Regnier, Colten Johnson, or Jordan Versch.

All of Richmond’s early struggles disappeared Friday in a 35-20 win in Marion’s homecoming game against Bennington.

Richmond scored the first Warriors touchdown on a 14-yard option keeper. Richmond also set up an 18-yard touchdown run for Regnier on an option play. Richmond had 51 yards rushing on eight attempts and Regnier had 55 yards rushing on eight attempts.

Les Riggs scored the Warriors second and fourth touchdowns on goal line runs of 1 and 5 yards. Riggs ended the game with 157 yards rushing.

Richmond even passed for a touchdown. He threw a 20-yard strike to Eric Regnier in the middle of the end zone to put the Warriors up 35-6.

“Dillon did a good job early on,” coach Grant Thierolf said.

For most of the first half, the Warrior offensive line dominated the line of scrimmage, picking up chunks of yardage any time it wanted.

“Even when it didn’t seem like much we ended up picking up 4 or 5 yards,” Richmond said.

The only problem is that the Warriors had to play four quarters of football and not two.

“For that 15 minutes, I thought we played well,” Thierolf said.

Marion gave up a 46-yard touchdown run to Brian Gellinger on the second play of the game. It was the second consecutive week the Warriors gave up a long touchdown run on the second play of the game.

Even after the Warriors took a 35-6 advantage, Bennington featuring only 15 players, scored to end the first half on another Brian Gellinger run. Gellinger finished the drive off with a two-point conversion.

To start the second half, Gellinger struck again, scoring on a 63-yard touchdown run to make the score 35-20. Gellinger ended the game with 187 rushing yards, averaging 8.1 yards a carry.

“It’s what happens when you give a team a chance,” Thierolf said.

Although that is where the score would remain, the Warriors offense sputtered.

“We did some things right,” Richmond said, “but we probably should have had a couple more (touchdowns).”

The Warriors have not been used to playing blowouts. The win against Lyons was closer than the 20-7 score would indicate. The 14-13 win against Inman came down to the last play of the game.

Richmond also said the Warrior junior varsity team, on which he and several starters on this year’s team played last year, had more than half of its games come down to the last play.

“Teams have to finish games off,” Thierolf said.

Thierolf explained that the Warriors might run out of energy if they keep allowing teams to come back at the ends of games.

“We have to identify the things we do well and do them,” Thierolf said. “You can learn as much from a bad win as you can from a good loss.”

stats

RUSHING: Riggs 25-157, 2 TD; Jordan Versch 4-6; Randy Regnier 8-55 1 TD; Richmond 8-51; Mikael Antoszyk 1-17.

TACKLES: Connor Thierolf 10; Randy Regnier 3; Adam Cope 6; Brody Carroll 4; Cole Lewman 3; Corey Hiebert 2; David Helmer 2; Dakin Ledford 2; Tim Costello 2; Versch 2.

INTERCEPTIONS: Randy Regnier 1.

Last modified Sept. 22, 2010

 

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