North Branch Runs Past Rock Ridge on Rainy Night

North Branch hosted Rock Ridge on Friday night.

What started as a beautiful night for football, was soon met with rain. But then again rain on a warm fall night, isn't that perfect football weather?

The Vikings came in sporting a 3-0 record and looked to keep that intact against a Wolverines team coming in with some momentum.

The Vikings scored on all but two of their first half possessions, and one of the drives they didn't score was the last drive of the half with only a few seconds left.

It started with an Ethan Thorsen pass to Logan Hammel to take the lead on the opening drive of the game. Hammel would score on the next possession as well from 21 yards out to put his team up 16-0. Their next offensive possession came at the end of the 1st quarter and extending to the start of the 2nd. It didn't take long for them to score, this time Thorsen ran it in from 50 yards out, extending the lead 22-0. Then on the next possession Brody Mitchell got in from 6 yards out to further extend the lead 30-0.

Now the Vikings defense had played lights out all night, despite the Wolverines running many different play designs out of the gun. They were disciplined in their assignments and stuck to their receivers, and also got more than one guy tackling the ball carrier. But late in the 1st half Rock Ridge was able to find alittle bit of momentum. They were able to gash the Vikings defense a few times and also capitalized on some NB penalties. Although up to this point North Branch had stopped their drives from getting into the endzone, this time Rock Ridge scored to make it 30-6 before half. With time still on the clock, the Vikings weren't going to waste it and tried to get into the endzone with only seconds left. While they didn't, they still had a big pass play to Hammel for 40 yards to end the half.

The Vikings offense scored twice more in the 2nd half, a one yard plunge from Nolan Bahr and an 11 yard TD run from Thorsen. Their defense was solid and didn't allow Rock Ridge close to the endzone. While there were still over 5 minutes left in the game, it was called due to lightning and the Vikings won 44-6.

North Branch moves to 4-0 and will play at Duluth East on Friday.

Our Pine Insurance Player of the game was North Branch's QB Ethan Thorsen. 5-5 120 yards passing 1 TD, 6 carries 169 yards 2 rushing TD's.