Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

SOLON – For weeks Solon coach Kevin Miller had been waiting for his team to put together a complete effort for a full 48 minutes.

The Spartans picked the perfect time to deliver precisely the type of performance their coach was looking for.

Second-ranked Solon scored on its first four possessions and cruised to a 24-0 win over Pella (8-3) on Friday in a Class 3A quarterfinal at frigid Spartan Stadium.

“We have been challenging our football team for the past two or weeks saying its time for us to put four full quarters together,” Miller said. “The first half offensively we moved the football pretty effectively and efficiently and defensively we had two big stops and I can’t say enough about our coaches and the plan they had and our kids came out and did a tremendous job of executing.”

Solon (11-0) was dominant on both sides of the ball from the opening kick while returning to the semifinals for the second time in three seasons.

The Spartans will play seventh-ranked Sergeant Bluff-Luton (10-1) in a 3A semifinal on Thursday at 8:30 p.m. at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls.

“It’s awesome and words can’t even describe it but we aren’t even close to being done,” Solon senior Seamus Poynton said. “As exciting as it is, it’s not over yet.”

Solon was impressive in all three phases on Friday.

Senior quarterback Cam Miller ran for 123 yards and two touchdowns and Poynton added 76 yards on 12 carries as Solon racked up 235 yards on the ground.

On defense Solon forced four turnovers and limited Pella to 186 total yards while handing the Dutch their first shutout since 2013.

The Solon special teams were sharp when called upon with senior Cael O’Neill drilling a 33-yard field goal.  

“I thought we were sharp in all three phases tonight,” Miller said. “I thought Cam did a really good job of running the football and managing the game and our defense was outstanding special teams was again great. I am just really happy for our kids, I truly am.”

Solon got a break less than a minute into the game when senior Michael Broghammer hopped on a Ryan Mace fumble at the Solon 44 yard line.

The Spartans turned the early turnover into points, when Miller scored on a 12-yard scramble straight up the middle on a third-and-nine play to put Solon up 7-0 less than five minutes into the game.

“They got two plays on us to start the game and we had that fumble and the momentum just shifted,” Poynton said. “You could just feel the momentum shift when we scored that first touchdown. That was huge.”

Solon made it 14-0 less than three minutes later when Miller connected with Jace Andregg on an 18-yard touchdown pass.

“We put in a lot of new stuff this week and I think that helped us,” Andregg said. “We had good practices all week and we came out and executed really well.”

O’Neill hit a 33-yard field goal with 14 seconds left in the first half to make it 17-0 Solon and the Spartans put the game away in the second quarter.

Pella put together its best drive of the game in the second quarter marching inside the Solon 10.

On fourth-and-2 Solon stopped Aaron Downs for no gain on a keeper.

“We did really good with our blitzes,” Solon senior Jax Flynn said. “We saw they had a lot of gaps open and we went after them with the blitz and that worked out really well.”

The Spartans responded by marching 91 yards on 14 consecutive run plays taking a 24-0 lead on a 5-yard keeper by Miller with 2:43 left in the first half.

“We wanted to try to spread them out and we went into some of our five wide stuff to try to pull them out of the box and they kind of pulled out and so we ran the quarterback,” Miller said. “If you want to put bodies out to defend our athletes we have a guy that can run the football inside too.”

Solon deployed all of its offensive weapons on Friday.

With Pella sending blitzers and aggressively pushing its pass rushers up the field Solon used a combination of quick passes to Andregg and AJ Coons, jet sweeps to Andregg, Lucas TePoel and Jackson Ryan and quarterback runs by Miller.

Solon had 198 of its 235 rushing yards in the first half while putting up 236 total yards in the first two quarters.

Miller passed for 58 yards, Andregg ran for 29 and caught two passes for 39 yards.

“Honestly it was the most fun game so far, not just because of the circumstances but it was just a fun game to play,” Poynton said. “They were a tough team, I take nothing away from them they were a big physical team but it was fun to go out there and play the way that we did today.”

Defensively, Solon was equally impressive.

The Spartans limited a Pella team that entered averaging 354 yards and 33 points per game to just 186 yards and nine first downs.

“We really bowed up and I think that is the best we have played,” Andregg said. “We held them to a goose egg and you can’t do any better than that.”

                                    SOL                PEL

First downs                16                    9

Rushes-yards             49-235             26-97

Comp-Att-Int               5-9-0                11-21-2

Passing yards             58                    89

Total yards                  293                  186

Punts-avg                   4-37.5              5-39.6

Fumbles-lost               1-0                   3-2

Penalties-yards          6-64                 6-80

Solon               17  7  0  0  –  0

Pella                  0   0  0  0  –  0

SOL – Cam Miller 12 run (Cael O’Neill kick)  

SOL – Jace Andregg 19 pass from Cam Miller (O’Neill kick)

SOL – O’Neill 33 field goal

SOL – Miller 5 run (O’Neill kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – SOL: Cam Miller 20-123, Seamus Poynton 12-76, Jace Andregg 9-29, Lucas TePoel 3-17, Jackson Ryan 3-9, Bo Janssen 1-(-2), Team 1-(-17). PEL: Aaron Downs 11-79, Aidan Pollock 5-18, River Baker 1-4, Ryan Mace 9-(-4).

PASSING – SOL: Cam Miler 5-9-0 58. PEL: Ryan Mace 11-21-2 89.

RECEIVING – SOL: AJ Coons 3-19, Jace Andregg 2-39. PEL: Logan Shetterly 5-42, Josh Warner 2-19, Warren Page 1-20, Aidan Pollock 1-5, Joe Jansen 1-3.

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