Undefeated Bondurant-Farrar had little trouble in posting a 62-7 win over a limited Perry team at Dewey Field Friday.
The visiting Bluejays improved to 6-0 overall and 2-0 in Class 4A District 5 play while the host Bluejays fell to 0-6 and 0-2.
Several changes were made to the format of Friday’s game, all of which were pre-arranged with the co-operation of the two coaching staffs.
Injuries have limited the available pool of players for Perry, with the coaching staff refusing to insert unprepared and undersized freshman and some of the sophomore class onto the grid against good varsity competition.
B-F was understanding, agreeing to play a regulation 12-minute first quarter but then have the final three frames limited to just eight minutes. As special teams play might increase the odds of injury, the guests had also agreed to not return punts during the game.
Of course, B-F is in a battle for the district title and playoff positioning, and thus was eager to not have the game forfeited in order to keep their team as sharp as possible for their remaining games (against winless Boone and Norwalk, who is 5-1, 2-0), a situation Perry head coach Bryce Pierce said he completely understood.
B-F raced to a 27-0 lead after one quarter and held a 41-0 advantage at halftime before eventually opening a 62-0 gulf. Perry capped the scoring when Logan Haynes broke into the end zone on a five-yard run, with Abe Ruiz kicking the point-after.
“Logan Haynes and Abe Ruiz both ran the ball hard for us, and I’m glad that our night ended with Logan getting into the end zone,” Pierce said.
Ruiz ran 11 times for 24 yards with Haynes scoring while gaining 12 yards on 16 totes while Caden Heck had two carries for a loss of 10 yards.
Heck connected on 1-of-4 passes, finding Holden Smith for a 17-yard gain.
Anthony Chavez had 5-1/2 tackles and Haynes 4-1/2, with Ruiz making four stops.
B-F used three quarterbacks, the group finishing 16-of-22 for 239 yards and four TDs. The guests ran the ball 19 times, gaining 295 total yards while having five different players score.
“Our kids played really hard again against another very solid opponent,” Pierce said. “We had a number of kids who had to step up this week and start based off of injuries we suffered last week, and they did a great job.”
“Alex Fickbohm, Carlos Alarcon, and Tony Tlaceca are three of those guys who were all over the field all night long,” he added. “We executed a number of aspects of our offense well and just need to make one or two more blocks correctly and more consistently to produce bigger plays, but those are easy mistakes to fix.”
Pierce stressed that the health and safety of his players was his primary concern. With those considerations understood, he was emphatic on not being forced into forfeiting a contest and expressed his gratitude to the B-F coaching staff. It is likely Perry’s home game with Norwalk Oct. 8 will also be played under certain restrictions.
“There is plenty to clean up and a lot of work that still needs to be done, but we do see progress from where we were at the beginning of the season to now,” Pierce said. “We want to finish the last portion of the season strongly.”
Norwalk will visit Dewey Field Oct. 8, with a trip to Boone scheduled for Oct. 15 while the season will conclude Oct. 22 at Carlisle.
