Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

SOLON – Solon received the opening kickoff on Friday night and immediately handed out a message to Mount Vernon.

“Our mentality all year has been to establish the run and be a physical football team and that’s what we wanted to do the first series,” first year Solon coach Lucas Stanton said. “We wanted the ball and we wanted to come out and show that we are a physical football team.”

Mission accomplished.

Solon marched 72 yards for a touchdown on 11 consecutive running plays on the opening drive of the game and never looked back in a 42-14 thumping of Class 2A fifth-ranked Mount Vernon (5-1) at Spartan Stadium in Solon.

Senior tailback Jackson Ryan ran for 159 yards and a score and sophomore quarterback Blake Timmons ran for 158 yards and a touchdown as Solon (4-2, 4-0) rolled up 401 rushing yards.

“The game plan for us all week was we knew we could run on them, that’s been our strength all year,” Timmons said. “We wanted to send a message right away and get our momentum on the first drive.”

Solon bullied the Mustangs on both sides of the ball from start to finish while taking over sole possession of first place in Class 2A, District 6 with its fourth consecutive win.

The Spartans averaged better than seven yards per carry and rolled up 401 yards on the ground Friday while winning for the 18^th consecutive time over Mount Vernon.

“It’s hard to believe that it has been 18 in a row but that’s the tradition here,” Timmons said. “Excellence is the tradition here.”

Mount Vernon won the toss and deferred giving Solon exactly what it wanted – the ball and a chance to set the tone early.

“We wanted the ball and we wanted to set the tone the first series that this is the type of game it was going to be,” Stanton said. “We wanted to dictate the type of game it was going to be.”

Solon did just that immediately.

The first three plays of the game went for first downs as Ryan ripped off 11 yards, Timmons went 15 and Hayden Taylor scampered 15.

Operating out of its heavy package Solon gained at least 2 yards on every play of the opening drive that was capped by a 1-yard touchdown run by Taylor with 7:11 left in the opening quarter.

“We know that we were the more physical team so we were coming out and we were just trying to mash them that first drive,” Solon senior offensive lineman Zach Harp said. “Just trying to teach them we were the more physical team and they couldn’t run with us.”

Mount Vernon pulled even briefly on a 61-yard scoring strike from Brady Ketchum to Collin Swantz with 2:40 left in the first quarter.

Solon answered immediately with a 10-play, 73-yard scoring march that featured nine consecutive running plays before Timmons hit Colton Hoffman with a 3-yard touchdown pass.

The Spartans used a 7-play, 80-yard drive capped by a 63-yard touchdown scamper by Timmons to take a 21-7 halftime lead.

It was more of the same the rest of the way.

Taylor scored a pair of second-half touchdowns on 5-yard runs and Ryan scored on a 13-yard run as Solon rolled up 489 yards of total offense.

“We have great running backs,” Harp said. “We just have to give them a wall and they make cuts and break so many tackles it’s awesome.”

Meanwhile the Solon defense harassed Ketchum into a 19-of-36 passing performance and had six sacks while holding the Mustangs to a season-low 14 points.

Ketchum threw for 264 yards but was picked off once and Solon limited the Mustangs to 79 yards rushing, 44 of which came on a 44-yard fourth-quarter scoring run by Trenton Pitlick.

“Their quarterback is good and the Swantz good is a dang good player and our defense is built around stopping the run so we really had to harp on our kids all week about the pass game,” Stanton said. “They really do thrive off the big play, we knew that they would get theirs at some point we just had to weather the storm on defense and keep playing our game.”

                                    SOL                MV

First downs                 25                    15

Rushes-yards              57-401             23-79

Comp-Att-Int              6-9-0               19-36-1

Passing yards              88                    264

Total yards                  489                  343

Punts-avg                    2-41                 4-22.8

Fumbles-lost               0-0                   1-1

Penalties-yards           16-132             9-54

Mount Vernon          7   0   0   7   –  14

Solon                            7  14  7  14  –  42

SOL – Hayden Taylor 1 run (Brent Lumpkin kick)

MV – Collin Swantz 61 pass from Brady Ketchum (Jake Coon kick)

SOL – Colton Hoffman 3 pass from Blake Timmons (Lumpkin kick)

SOL – Timmons 63 run (Lumpkin kick)

SOL – Jackson Ryan 13 run (Lumpkin kick)

SOL – Taylor 5 run (Lumpkin kick)

MV – Trenton Pitlick 44 run (Coon kick)

SOL – Taylor 5 run (Lumpkin kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – Solon: Jackson Ryan 22-159, Blake Timmons 15-158, Hayden Taylor 15-56, Carson Miller 3-23, Colton Hoffman 1-6, Team 1-(-1). Mount Vernon: Trenton Pitlik 13-103, Collin Swantz 2-1, Tyler Panos 1-3, Brady Ketchum 7-(-28).

PASSING – Solon: Blake Timmons 6-9-0 88. Mount Vernon: Brady Ketchum 19-36-1 264.

RECEIVING – Solon: Colton Hoffman 3-49, Ben Cusick 1-23, Carson Miller 1-12, Jackson Ryan 1-4. Mount Vernon: Collin Swantz 6-150, Jake Coon 7-57, Aidan Nosek 4-32, Elijah Exley-Schuman 2-25

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