HUMBOLDT — Mauling their opponents off the rip, the Humboldt Cubs heaved past the Cherryvale Chargers, 52-14, in a Week 2 showdown that featured a running clock in the second half.
Humboldt scored 28 points in the first quarter and 16 more in the second while keeping the Chargers off the board en route to the blowout.
“We preach jumping out and playing our game from the get-go,” Humboldt head coach Logan Wyrick said. “We like to get the ball early and play our game. It helps when you have success right off the bat. We want to get out and do what we do and play with our hair on fire. It goes a long ways when you can get out early.”
Blake Ellis showcased his ability to spread the offense, rushing for 132 yards on 10 carries and passing for 96 more yards while running for four scores.
“We were able to rotate a lot of guys into different spots,” Wyrick said. “We don’t have depth at every spot but we have guys that can play in different spots, and we were able to rotate tonight and be successful. Blake was able to spread the ball around. He’s got to be more consistent on some of our quick-game stuff. But a lot of guys got touches.”
Mason Sterling, who got reps at quarterback in the second half, rushed for 73 yards and a score and also passed for 19. Cole Mathes added 122 yards of rushing and a touchdown.
“We used some different looks, too,” Wyrick said. “We used some guys that don’t always play together to build some of that chemistry. We wanted to get Mason some reps at quarterback. A lot of teams would love to have him as their starting quarterback. We’re able to move him around as a gadget guy. I get the running clock, but I honestly wanted to get him a few more snaps.”
After taking down Neodesha in Week 1, the early scoring onslaught from Humboldt overwhelmed Cherryvale on Friday night.
“We just came out a little flat,” Cherryvale head coach Daniel Vaughn said. “We were back on our heels and you can’t do that against a team like Humboldt. It just got away from us.”
Struggles on picking up Humboldt’s read-option concepts kept the Chargers on their back foot early.
“We just had some misreads by our linebackers early on that put them way out of position,” Vaughn said. “That gave them a huge advantage in the run game.”
Cherryvale has the most inexperience on its offense this fall. The Chargers found the endzone twice in the second half with a touchdown run from Ethan Umbarger and a catch from Cayden Evenson.
“I thought our offensive line play was way better tonight than Week 1, it just didn’t show in our output,” Vaughn said. “A lot of our offense is based on reads, and we took some steps in that.”
Humboldt improved to 2-0 with the win over its Tri-Valley League foe while Cherryvale dropped to 1-1.
Up next
Humboldt hits the road to face winless Erie.
“They have some similarities to what we’ve seen with heavy sets,” Wyrick said. “They’ll show some flexbone. We’ve gotten some good prep for them. We change defenses a lot to match up with people. We haven’t gotten to play Erie in a while, so it’s great to get that matchup going again. We always like shorter road trips.”
As for Cherryvale, it heads home to face Eureka.
“We know they’ve got some speed and we know they’ll run a lot of flexbone offense,” Vaughn said. “We’ve just got to be assignment-sound.”
