TOLEDO — Bucking tradition, the Toledo football team came out firing.
On its first offensive play against Toutle Lake, the Riverhawk offense looked long; Austin Norris faked the handoff and rolled right, and hit Austin Nichols for a huge gain… only to have the play get called back for holding.
“That’s why we don’t throw, right there,” head coach Mike Christensen said with a laugh.
Suitably corrected, Toledo went right back to its bread and butter and ran the ball up the gut with Geoffrey Glass four straight times until the senior was in the end zone. And the Riverhawks wouldn’t stop running until the final buzzer sounded on a 67-15 non-league win.
Glass racked up 70 yards on that opening drive, and had 75 of his game-high 110 in the first quarter alone.
“He’s a really good running back,” Christensen said. “He works hard. In a lot of ways, he’s the heart and soul of our team, so we wanted to get him going early and that worked for us. It kind of opened things up on the outside.”
With Ethen Carver out with an injury, more of the workload early fell on the senior’s shoulders, and he made one last impact on the scoreboard in the second quarter after taking a punt return all the way back to the 18-yard line through multiple hits, then getting the rest of the yards to the end zone on back-to-back carriers.
“My mindset is to just keep on pushing,” Glass said. “You can’t stop no matter what, no matter who stands in your way. You just have to keep on pumping.”
His fellow Riverhawks in the starting backfield had similar success. Zane Ranney went for 54 yards and cashed in on a 2-yard touchdown in the first quarter. On the next Toledo possession, senior quarterback Austin Norris went straight forward on a quarterback sneak behind a convoy of linemen and didn’t stop until hit hit the goal line — 42 yards later.
Then, thanks to a defensive effort that quite literally had the Ducks going backwards more often than forwards in the first half, Christensen got to empty his bench.
It started with backup quarterback Eli Weeks coming in midway through the second quarter, working in with the varsity offense. The freshman threw an interception on his first toss — aiming, ironically enough, for Norris — but completed his other two throws for 76 yards. He also found the end zone three times with his legs.
“I want to get him reps. He’s got the potential to be the guy in the future, and I want to get him reps early this year when we get a chance to,” Christensen said. “In the second quarter we had the chance to get him some varsity reps with the varsity line and other varsity kids.”
Once the second half came and the clock started rolling, the youth movement came in for Toledo. By the end of the game, 10 Riverhawks had carried the ball, totalling 354 yards on 34 carries for a per-carry average over 10.
“That’s what you want to see,” Christensen said. “You want to see those guys get good, solid reps and perform well.”
On the flip side, Toutle managed just 78 yards on its 34 carries, including three longer ones that totalled 83; Toledo stopped the Ducks at or behind the line of scrimmage 18 times.
“At the end of the day we hit them harder than they hit us,” Glass said. “That’s the mentality to have.”
Toledo (2-1) will host North Beach in one more non-league matchup before getting into division play.
