Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

WILLIAMSBURG – Through six weeks the Williamsburg senior duo of Grant Hocker and Rayce Heitman was the most productive passing combination in the state.

Heitman and Hocker added to their state-leading totals on Friday night while lifting Williamsburg to an impressive 42-13 win over Solon at Bob Murphy Stadium in Williamsburg.

Hocker tossed five touchdown passes, three to Heitman as Williamsburg (6-1) rolled to its fifth consecutive win and improved to 3-0 in Class 3A, District 5 contests.

“Rayce is awesome, all my receivers are awesome,” Hocker said. “They are big, fast and they catch everything.”

Hocker threw touchdown passes of 15, 7 and 5 yards to Heitman and added scoring strikes of 10 yards to Cael Moore and 67 yards to Nile Sinn to up his state-leading touchdown pass total to 34.

Heitman has now hauled in 19 touchdowns, the most in Iowa.

“They covered our deep game which is our strength so we had to find ways to get underneath and get yardage after the catch,” Heitman said. “We had to find a way to win the game.”

Solon (5-2, 1-2) trailed 7-6 late in the first quarter but had an opportunity to take control of the game after Maddox Kelley picked off Hocker and returned it 30 yards to the Raider 29 yard line.

The Spartans had a first and goal at the 3 yard line and second goal inside the one but three consecutive running plays netted a loss of four yards.

Four plays later Hocker rolled out and found Sinn for a 67-yard touchdown pass on a third-and-6 play that made the score 14-6.

“Stopping them on the goal line was huge,” Heitman said. “That changed everything.

Solon hung around throughout the first half.

The Spartans trailed just 21-13 at the half after Eddie Johnson raced 80 yards for a touchdown with 3:30 remaining in the second quarter.

It was all Raiders in the second half.

Williamsburg outscored Solon 21-0 over the final 24 minutes putting the game out of reach with a pair of four-quarter touchdown passes from Hocker to Heitman.

“I’m not going to use injuries as an excuse but other guys have to step up and as coaches we have to get through to our kids and get them to execute,” Solon coach Lucas Stanton. “They turned it up a notch the second half and we didn’t.”

Last season Solon won the regular season meeting with Williamsburg 21-14 in Solon before the Raiders rattled of six straight wins, including a semifinal victory over the Spartans, on its way to the 3A state title.

Long-time Williamsburg head coach Curt Ritchie said this year’s team learned from last year’s loss.

“Our guys didn’t panic,” Ritchie said. “Last year we went into this game after three games of making big plays and when it didn’t go that way, playing two plays and celebrating, we got frustrated and we didn’t stick together and we didn’t stay patient. We just of fell apart. I thought these guys did a great job of learning from that.”

Hocker finished 10-of-16 passing for 208 yards and the Raiders ran for 206 yards behind 103 yards from Sinn.

Heitman caught five passes for 55 yards and John Eichhorn had two grabs for 53 yards.

“Their RPO game is really good and I thought the first half for the most part we were able to take some of that stuff away,” Stanton said. “They ran the ball on us a little better than we would have liked and they found some holes and they made plays. Their receivers are great, they made plays when they needed to.”

Johnson rushed for 150 yards and two touchdowns for Solon while senior quarterback Ty Bell was 13-of-22 for 120 yards.

Solon returns home to host Fairfield (2-5) next week and closes the regular season at South Tama (0-7)

“I challenged them after the game, we have two weeks and we aren’t overlooking our opponents but we have two weeks to sharpen up and get healthy and I think we will be a dangerous team come playoff time,” Stanton said. “But we have to improve.”

                                       SOL                WIL

First downs                16                    20

Rushes-yards             35-189             37-206

Comp-Att-Int            13-22-1           10-16-0

Passing yards             120                  208

Total yards                309                  414

Punts-Avg.                 5-37.2              2-28

Fumbles-lost              1-1                   0-0

Penalties yards          9-94                 9-65

Solon                          6   7   0   0   –  13

Williamsburg          7  14  7  14  –  42

WIL – Cael Moore 10 pass from Grant Hocker (Colby McMullin kick)

SOL – Eddie Johnson 3 run (Kick failed)

WIL – Nile Sinn 67 pass from Hocker (McMullin kick)

WIL – Rayce Heitman 15 pass from Hocker (McMullin kick)

SOL – Johnson 80 run (Collin McKie kick)

WIL – Grady Wetjen 65 run (McMullin kick)

WIL – Heitman 7 pass from Hocker (McMullin kick)

WIL – Heitman 5 pass from Hocker (McMullin kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – Solon: Eddie Johnson 22-150, Einar Stecher 5-30, Maddox Kelley 4-19, Ty Bell 4-(-10). Williamsburg: Nile Sinn 23-103, Grady Wetjen 4-63, Rayce Heitman 2-32, Grant Hocker 5-11, Albert Bamrick 3-(-3).

PASSING – Solon: Ty Bell 13-22-1 120. Williamsburg: Grant Hocker 10-16-0 208.

RECEVING – Solon: Maddox Kelley 4-39, Owen Einwalter 4-37, Eli Kampman 2-29, Karsyn Regennitter 1-11, Eddie Johnson 1-7, Tripp Johnson 1-(-3). Williamsburg: Nile Sinn 1-67, Rayce Heitman 5-55, John Eichhorn 2-53, Grady Wetjen 1-23, Cael Moore 1-10.

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