Carrion carries Bears to 55-20 win
Post Independent Staff
DELTA – What started as a football game between Rifle and Delta on Friday morphed into a contest of numbers.
The 55-20 final score made Bear fans happy, left Delta rooters stunned and both teams statistician’s with sore fingers.
Beyond the 75 points the two teams posted, the offenses combined for 894 total yards, 42 first downs and 11 touchdowns.
That is if you had enough interest to watch the whole game.
Rifle (4-1 overall, 2-0 Western Slope Conference) sent a lot fans home to their television sets when they took 28-0 lead in the first quarter.
The Panthers’ failure to field a loose ball on the opening kickoff led to the game’s first score.
Bear John Alderson fell on the unattended football on Delta’s 17. Two plays and 40 seconds later, Rifle scored.
Rocky Rauman punched over from the 10. The junior scored his second TD with 1 minute, 40 seconds left in the quarter.
Between the junior’s touchdowns quarterback Kyle Sanderson scored on runs of 4 and 1 yard.
Delta got seven back when Panther quarterback Blake Carlquist found Andrew Lockwood in the end zone on a 33-yard pass seven seconds after Rauman’s TD.
No problem for the Bears.
Running back Marcus Carrion raised Rifle’s lead to 35-7 on a 4-yard run which capped a 17-play, 67-yard march which took half of the second quarter to culminate.
Carrion had 114 of his game-high 160 yards in the first half.
The senior credited the offensive line for his success.
“The blockers had everything covered pretty well,” said Carrion. “They gave me a hole. I just hit it hard and it worked out.”
Troy Weiss, who played sparingly due to a ankle injury, scored Rifle’s only passing touchdown when he snagged Sanderson’s pass out of the backfield for a 30-yard catch-and-run in the third quarter.
Ahead 42-7 coach Darrel Gorham let the subs play the final 12 minutes.
In the fourth quarter junior running back Jordan Robinson had a 59-yard TD run and sophomore Josh Gustad scored from 39 yards out.
“These guys worked hard and had a good game tonight,” said Gorham. “But, we have to switch gears to next Friday’s game with Moffat County immediately.”
The Bulldogs are 1-0 in the WSC after defeating Glenwood Springs, 28-7 in last week’s conference opener. Moffat County played Bayfield in a nonconference game on Saturday. No result was available at press time.
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