Offensive performance
Brady Ambrose/Ts-Press
The Reedsburg offense put on a clinic Friday night as the Beavers rolled to a 38-21 win at Stoughton in the 2008 season opener for both teams.
RAHS rushed for 259 yards and Tyler Mazur passed for another 170 as coach Brian Pottinger and the Beavers won their first game of the season for the third straight year. "It can be a tough game to win sometimes because you don't know a lot about your opponent so it is a great win to get to open the season," Pottinger said .
Besides passing for 170 yards, Mazur, who begins his final year as the Beaver signal caller, also rushed for 100 yards on 11 carries. But it was the play of Matt Lennon who sparked the Beavers.
The Reedsburg sophomore, making his first start on the varsity offense, accounted for 147 all purpose yards and scored four times, including a 77 yard touchdown pass from Mazur to put the Beavers up 7-0 at the 5:20 mark in the first period, and an 84 yard kickoff return after Stoughton had tied the game on a one yard run by Eric Gerber. "Our offense did a nice job of overcoming our mistakes and adjusting to what the defense was trying to do. We've known that Matt is a talented player but this is the first time he's really had a chance to showcase it as a full time starter," Pottinger said.
Lennon added a 26 yard touchdown run at the 9:38 mark in the second quarter to give the Beavers a 21-7 lead, but the Vikings answered back with an 11 yard pass from Eric Gerber to Kyle LaZotte to cut the lead to 21-14.
A 30 yard field goal from Justin Huinker gave the Beavers a 24-14 lead going into the locker room. Pottinger said "Offensively we made a few blocking adjustments during halftime but defensively it was a matter of getting under control when tackling in the open field. We seemed to be in the right position most of the time but we just weren't tackling very well."
Stoughton took the opening kickoff of the second half and put together a long drive that ended in a screen pass from Gerber to Jordan Adams that turned into a 30 yard touchdown for the Vikings as Adams eluded several Reedsburg players and broke several more tackles on his way into the end zone.
The Beavers answered with a drive of their own. Reedsburg moved to the Stoughton 28 where Mazur hit Ryan Dischler with an eight yard completion to the 16.
Mazur picked up five yards to the 11 and seven more to the four, where Lennon scored on the next play to give Reedsburg a 31-21 lead.
Mazur added a 16 yard run to put the Beavers up 38-21, and the lead held up the entire fourth quarter as neither team scored in the final 15 minutes.
Besides Lennon, Pottinger also had praise for Zach Downing, Josh Brown and Tyler Archambo, saying "Zach had a good game at center and Josh and Tyler graded out well on defense."
Reedsburg will face Monona Grove Friday night at 7 p.m. at RAHS. The Silver Eagles handled Baraboo Friday night 48-27. Monona Grove quarterback Aaron Kondrasuk ran for four touchdowns — which added up to 177 yards Friday.
The 6-foot-3, 195-pounder had touchdown runs of 34, 26, 67 and 50 yards, accounting for half of his team's points.
He also had an 89-yarder called back on a penalty. The Silver eagles rushed for 449 yards on 39 carries, an 11.5 yards per carry average, and had three different players each rush for at least 120 yards in the win.
"We need to improve on a few things, basic fundamentals like open field tackling and playing hard all the way to the whistle. We also need to shore up some stuff on our special teams," concluded the coach as the Beavers prepare for Friday night.
Reedsburg Youth Football teams will be introduced at halftime, and a punt, pass and kick contest will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Reedsburg Youth Football will host a variety of game day activities Friday.