Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

MOUNT VERNON – There haven’t been many, if any, early season struggles for Maddox Kelley in his first season at quarterback.

The transition from wide receiver to quarterback has been so seamless for Kelley his toughest challenge has been what would be most quarterback’s dream.

Which talented playmaker to get the football to.

“It’s hard sometimes, honestly,” Kelley said when asked how to determine who gets the ball. “I can choose whoever I want, whatever is easiest I guess.”
Junior Owen Bock was the latest Spartan to step into a starring role on Friday.

Kelley threw three touchdown passes, two to Bock, and ran for another score as Solon (3-0) cruised to a 41-7 win over Mount Vernon (2-1) in a non-district contest at Martha Parsons Activities Complex in Mount Vernon.

“We have probably the best receiving corps in Iowa and our line is great and we know we can run the ball,” Kelley said. “I don’t think teams know how to prepare for us and that helps a lot.”

Kelley threw for 230 yards and three touchdowns and rushed for 88 yards and another score as Solon rolled up 404 yards of total offense while stretch its win streak over Highway 1 rival Mount Vernon to four.

Bock hauled in seven passes for 175 yards and two touchdowns.

“Our coaches do a great job of breaking apart the defense and everyone is ready to step up,” Bock said. “Defenses have to chose one of us to guard and our coaches do a great job of getting us open and someone steps up every week.”
In the first two games senior Kade Hoeper had seven receptions for 168 yards and five touchdowns.

Hoeper added a touchdown on Friday but it was Bock’s turn to shine in the balanced Solon offense.

Bock had touchdown grabs of 70 and 25 yards as Solon matched its highest scoring output against Mount Vernon since 2021.

“That’s the way we want to be and that’s the way we have to be,” Solon coach Lucas Stanton said. “We are really trying to talk to them about it doesn’t matter who gets the credit, each and every week it could be a different guy and it should be somebody different and Maddox is pretty unselfish, he is going to spread the ball out and take what the defense is giving us.”

It took less than five minutes for Solon to take control of the game.

Kelley recovered a fumble on the second play of the game and three plays later scored on a 12-yard touchdown run to give Solon a 7-0 lead less than two minutes into the game.

“We always like to play to a standard and that first fumble the moment changed a lot,” Kelley said. “They could never get anything going after that.”

Solon forced a three-and-out on the ensuing Mount Vernon possession and partially blocked a punt that gave the Spartans the ball at the Mount Vernon 32.

Two plays later Jackson Burk scored on a 24-yard run and Solon led 14-0 with 7:38 remaining in the first quarter.

“I definitely liked the way we started,” Stanton said. “Going into this we wanted to establish our physicality and our athleticism right off the bat.”

Bock gave Solon a 24-0 lead with 3:56 remaining in the first half when he hauled in a 70-yard touchdown pass from Kelley.

“We showed a lot of hitches in our game plan and film and we knew if we could sell a hitch and go it would be open,” Bock said. “The whole week we game planned for that and it was great to see it pay off.”

Bock capped a 6-play, 92-yard touchdown drive to open the second half with a 25-yard touchdown catch and run that put Solon up 31-0.

Hoeper snagged a 4-yard touchdown pass from Kelley with 7:33 remaining in the third quarter to give Solon a 38-0 lead and trigger the continuous clock.

Kelley finished 11-of-15 passing for 230 yards.

Hoeperhad two receptions for 40 yards and Burk rushed for 52 yards and a touchdown.

“We saw coming in that their defense liked to play a lot of man so we knew with our wide receivers we could take advantage of that and we did,” Kelley said. “Owen Bock had a great night, everyone was stepping up and helping us.”

Solon limited Mount Vernon to 213 yards of total offense and just 113 rushing yards on 35 carries.

“We knew they wanted to come out and run at us and Jakob Yock is a great runner so we knew we had to stop that,” Solon senior Simon Einwalter said. “Our whole goal was to stop them from getting any rushing yards.”

                                              SOL                MV

First downs                15                    11

Rushes-yards             25–146             35-113

Comp-Att-Int            15-21-1           8-12-0

Passing yards             258                  100

Total yards                404                  213

Punts-Avg.                 0-0                   4-22.3

Fumbles-lost              4-0                   2-1

Solon                            14  10  14  3  –  41

Mount Vernon           0    0    0   7  –   7

SOL – Maddox Kelley 12 run (Collin McKie kick)

SOL – Jackson Burk 24 run (McKie kick)

SOL – McKie kick 30 field goal

SOL – Owen Bock 70 pass from Kelley (McKie kick)

SOL – Bock 25 pass from Kelley (McKie kick)

SOL – Hoeper 4 pass from Kelley (McKie kick)

SOL – McKie 35 field goal

MV – Holden Hlavacek 43 pass form Noah Olsen (Jack Carnes kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – SOL: Maddox Kelley 10-88, Jackson Burk 9-52, Greyson Burg 3-2, Foster Owens 1-3, Grant Milliman 1-2, Ryder Laing 1-(-1).

MV: Jakob Yock 22-85, Eli Casey 1-18, Easton Reasland 5-13, Holden Hlavacek 1-6, Noah Oleson 4-2, Luke Robinson 1-(-2), Team 1-(-9).

PASSING – SOL: Maddox Kelley 11-15-0 230, Ryder Laing 4-6-1 28. MV: Noah Olsen 6-8-0 82, Easton Reasland 2-4-0 18.

RECEIVING – SOL: Owen Bock 7-175, Kaden Hoeper 2-40, Cody Milliman 2-15, Michael Bigelow 2-10, Wyatt Young 1-4, Paxton Holtkamp 1-14. MV: Holden Hlavacek 2-54, Graham Yanda 2-10, Jakob Yock 1-12, Tysen Zacharakis-Jutz 1-12, Eli Casey 1-11, Andrew Dix 1-1.

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