Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

WEST BRANCH – West Branch entered its final non-district game of the season searching for a few things.

The Bears needed a morale boost, a confidence builder and mostly a notch in the win column.

West Branch got all of those things on Friday night.

Connor Rios ran for two touchdowns and threw a touchdown pass and Cooper Gates ran for three scores as West Branch (1-2) rolled to a 49-7 win over Waterloo Columbus at The Little Rose Bowl in West Branch.

“We needed this,” first-year West Branch coach John Nestor said. “We needed it for confidence, we needed it for team morale, we just needed it.”

Friday’s win was the first for Nestor at West Branch and stopped a three-game losing streak for the Bears that dated back to last season.

West Branch was outscored 82-10 in consecutive losses to Williamsburg and Dike-New Hartford to open the season but got right in a big way on Friday.

“When you lose the first two out of the gate you start to look around and say, ‘are we doing the right things?’, you start the question the things you are doing,” Nestor said. “We have to remember this is a super young team and we had two really good opponents in those first two weeks but this was huge I think this will help us going forward.”

Rios stepped in for injured quarterback Brennen Dale and shined in his first start of the season.

The senior completed 10-of-18 passes for 242 yards and a touchdown and also rushed for 66 yards and two touchdowns as West Branch racked up a season-high 438 total yards.

“I just wanted to stick with the basics and go with the short stuff first and eventually we could go deep,” Rios said. “The short stuff for us today was our run game.”

Gates rushed for 119 yards and three touchdowns as West Branch averaged 9.7 yards per play.

Gates scored on touchdown runs of 22, 23 and 27 yards and Tate Frantz returned a fumble 32 yards for a touchdown as West Branch won its second straight over Waterloo Columbus (0-3).

“We just needed a game like this,” Gates said. “Last year we were in the same spot and we just knew we had to get a win this game to get it rolling.”

West Branch won the toss and elected to receive the opening kickoff.
The Bears wasted little time taking control marching 61 yards in seven plays and taking a 7-0 lead on a seven-yard touchdown run by Rios.

“I think that first drive was really huge,” Rios said. “We went down the field, our run game was strong and our line was really good today.”

After forcing Waterloo Columbus to punt on its opening drive of the game West Branch struck quickly as Rios hit sophomore Brandon Pedersen for a 63-yard touchdown pass that put the Bears up 14-0.

“That first quarter was huge,” Nestor said. “I don’t typically take the ball, I always go on defense first but I wanted the football, I wanted to set the tone and give the offense confidence they went down on that first drive and it was huge.”

West Branch added a touchdown on a 22-yard run by Gates in the first quarter and took a 28-7 into the locker room at halftime after Rios scored on a 2-yard quarterback sneak with under a minute to play in the first half.

“This was definitely a really big momentum change for our season,” Rios said. “We knew we needed this to get some momentum going into our district games and hopefully the postseason.”

West Branch scored touchdown on its first two drives of the second half, both on runs by Gates.

The Bears finished with 198 rushing yards on just 25 carries as

“Our offensive line really did a good job pushing up front,” Gates said. “Connor Rios stepped up at quarterback and we were able to run and throw the ball.”

West Branch limited Waterloo Columbus to just 37 yards of total offense and recovered three Sailor fumbles.

Lincoln Naber had 2.5 sacks and Michael Montgomery had a sack as West Branch finished with eight tackles for loss.

                                    WB                 WC

First downs                19                    6

Rushes-yards             25-198             27–0

Comp-Att-Int            12-20-1           5-11-0

Passing yards            240                  37

Total yards                438                  37

Punts-Avg.                 0-0                   7-39

Fumbles-lost              4-2                   4-3

Penalties-yards          10-90               8-51

Waterloo Columbus            7  0   0   0  –   7

West Branch                          21  7  21  0  –  49

WB – Connor Rios 7 run (Reese Gingerich kick)

WB – Brandon Pedersen 63 pass from Rios (Gingerich kick)

WC – Thomas Fereday 18 fumble return (Spencer Schaefer kick)

WB – Cooper Gates 22 run (Gingerich kick)

WB – Rios 2 run (Gingerich kick)

WB – Tate Frantz 32 fumble return (Gingerich kick)

WB – Gates 23 run (Gingerich kick)

WB – Gates 27 run (Gingerich kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – WB: Cooper Gates 10-119, Connor Rios 11-66, Keaton Gates 4-19, Team 2-(-6).

PASSING – WB: Connor Rios 10-18-1 242, Nolan Staker 2-2-0 (-2).

RECEIVING – WB: Brandon Pedersen 3-86, Keaton Gates 3-13, Oliver Trepanier 2-43, Lincoln Naber 2-53, Ethan Miller 1-42, Conner Capper 1-3, Cooper Gates 1-0

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