LONGVIEW — The Toledo Riverhawks made their case for the top seed in the 2B state football tournament with a 47-7 win against Forks in a 2B district football game on Friday night at Longview Memorial Field.
The case was made in spite of Toledo not playing a good game, according to head coach Mike Christensen.
“I didn’t think we played great, especially first half. Sometimes byes are good, sometimes they’re bad and I think that week off helped us to lose a little bit of focus and it’s probably something we needed so big picture, it’s probably good for us to not come in focused and see if you’re not focused at this level, you’re going to lose. From here on out, we have to focus in practice and games.”
Carter Swofford ran for 135 yards and three touchdowns. Adam Kruger led the wide receivers with three catches for 96 yards and a touchdown. Quarterback Eli Weeks was 6 of 13 passing for 138 yards and a touchdown and also ran the ball four times for 61 yards and a score.
“I think we played really good and really bad at the same time. It wasn’t our best performance,” Weeks said. “We knew what our gameplan and our offense was a little shaky. That’s on me. I wasn’t throwing the best balls. We weren’t in check but then we kind of figured it out.”
The defense played well enough to win with four interceptions, and the offense played well scoring 16 points in the first quarter and 24 points in the second quarter to put the game away.
A big issue for the Riverhawks were penalties. Toledo had five penalties on each side of the ball and gave Forks 115 yards in unforced errors.
“This isn’t our greatest look because people are going to say we’re a dirty team. We’re really not a dirty team,” Weeks said. “The refs were going a little our way and it wasn’t helping that we were already having bad calls. We can agree that most of those calls were calls that should have been called and we shouldn’t have done it. Especially on the picks, I feel like every pick there was a flag and there’s no point in getting a guy that’s 20 yards behind but yeah, that’s on us.”
Toledo received the opening kickoff and went three and out, but forced Forks to punt the ball right back. The Riverhawks took the ball with a nice drive that ended in a 3-yard TD run by Swofford. Toledo received another Forks punt in the first quarter and responded on the first play with a long touchdown pass from Weeks to Kruger and a 16-0 lead after one.
The offense found its groove in the second quarter. Swofford found the endzone again with an 8-yard run. Weeks said I can do that too and on the next possession, scored on a 38-yard touchdown run.
With six seconds left in the half, Swofford scored on a 20-yard touchdown run to make the score 40-0 and force a running clock in the second half.
Toledo freshman and backup quarterback Joaquin Acosta capped the scoring for the Riverhawks with a 17-yard pass to Brady Weeks.
Forks did not allow a shutout as freshman quarterback Lane Helvey scored on a 2-yard run late in the fourth quarter.
Toledo entered the night on top of the 2B RPI rankings and Weeks said he believes they are the best team in the state.
Christensen is unsure if they will earn the top seed in the state tournament when the bracket is released on Sunday.
“There’s some good teams across the state. I don’t know if I expect a No. 1 seed, I would like to think that we’re Top 4 and get to play at home for a couple weeks,” Christensen said. “The committee members have some tough decisions so we’ll have to wait and see.”
