A good old-fashioned ground pounding lifts Cedar Rapids Kennedy to 61-34 win over Iowa City High

CEDAR RAPIDS — Man, the feeling you must get as an offensive lineman when you’re running the football, the opposing team knows you’re going to continue running the football, and they still can’t stop you.

“Just coming into the game, you’re just thinking to yourself how you are going to dominate them,” said Cedar Rapids Kennedy tackle Logan Johnson said Friday night after his Cougars grounded and pounded out a 61-34 win over Iowa City High at Bates Field. “And when you do, you just keep going every play. It’s in your mindset that you’re going to run every play, then when you do, you just have a great feeling about yourself. You see the other guys doing it, too, it keeps motivating you to keep going.”

You wouldn’t think a game that featured 95 points would be decided up front physically, but this one certainly was, as City High’s quick-tempo, quick-strike offense was countered and ultimately negated by a methodical Kennedy approach that produced positive rushing gain after positive rushing gain.

A little here, a little there. The Cougars dominated time of possession, running 59 times for 351 yards.

Trevor Scott had 171 yards and a touchdown, Jacob Doyle 164 yards and two TDs. Both backs (Scott’s a senior and Doyle a junior) ran hard, rarely going down after first contact.

“What I saw was it was won in the trenches, and I’ve got to give a shout out to our O-line,” Doyle said. “They did a great job blocking, our fullbacks did a great job blocking. We couldn’t do it without them.”

So, as Doyle said, shout out to Johnson and his fellow blockers. They’d be guards Austin Raue and Andrew Moser, tackles Johnson and Nick Brooks (the recent Iowa Hawkeyes commit), center Braylon Edwards, tight end Grant Mather and fullbacks Calvin White and Brayden Alber.

White, by the way, had a touchdown run and catch.

“That’s exactly what we wanted to do. We knew we were going to come down here and run the ball,” said Kennedy Coach Brian White. “We saw what we needed to see, that we needed to establish the run. We can throw the ball whenever we want, but we felt good about our offensive line and our running backs tonight. They didn’t let us down.

“We were going 5, 6, 7, 8 yards a crack. That’s old-school Kennedy football right there.”

Quarterback Vinny Gianforte threw a pair of touchdown passes, but attempted only two second-half throws, with Coach White saying he was kicking himself for calling those, coming when Kennedy drove inside the City High 20 by chewing ground. The Cougars created separation in the second quarter, getting a Scott 18-yard TD run, followed by a safety when City High quarterback Bobby Bacon was tackled in the end zone after dropping back to pass on third down.

Kennedy took the free kick and went right back down the field for a touchdown that made it a 23-7 game. The Cougars also got two pick-6s in the second half: one from Owen Anderson, the other from Christian Gasper.

Bacon threw for 311 yards and three touchdowns, two to Parker Sutherland, and Miles Parlet rushed for a pair of TDs. City High is 2-3.

The game was a penalty fest: 21 of them called, 12 on Kennedy. The flags included multiple personal foul calls, as things appeared chippy and chirpy at times.

That included in the postgame handshake line when White and City High counterpart Mitchell Moore had cross words with each other and appeared to be separated by assistants. White said an issue in a Thursday night freshman game between the schools was at the crux of the discussion.

“We got our season ended by them two years ago (in the playoffs), and I think that was a big part of things,” Johnson said. “Coming in, they were kind of disrespecting us in that game. So this was kind of a get-back game. We decided that, hey, they did that to us, we’d do it to them on their home field.”

“With some of the penalties that you saw, there’s just a lot of bad blood between us,” Doyle said. “So it just felt great to come here and beat them in their own house.”

Cedar Rapids Kennedy 61, Iowa City High 34

(At Bates Field)

Cedar Rapids Kennedy 7 19 28 7-61

Iowa City High 7 6 14 7-34

Team Statistics

First Downs - Kennedy 29, City High 19. Rushes-Yards - Kennedy 59-351, City High 23-107. Completions-Attempts-Interceptions-Passing Yards - Kennedy 8-15-0-115, City High 22-29-2-311. Total Yards - Kennedy 469, City High 418. Punts-Average - Kennedy 1-29.0, City High 1-29-0. Penalties-Yards - Kennedy 12-90, City High 9-66. Fumbles-Lost - Kennedy 0-0, City High 0-0.

Individual Statistics

Rushing - Kennedy: Trevor Scott 27-173, Jacob Doyle 23-164, Calvin White 3-9, Brayden Alber 1-9, Vinny Gianforte 5-(minus) 4. City High - Miles Parlet 14-80, Gabe Egeland 3-33, Bobby Bacon 6-(minus) 6.

Passing - Kennedy: Vinny Gianforte 8-15-0-115. City High: Bobby Bacon 22-29-2-311.

Receiving - Kennedy: Brayden Alber 2-39, Pierce McCrary 1-29, Grant Mather 1-19, Cyrus Courtney 2-19, Calvin White 1-7, Jacob Doyle 1-5. City High - Jeremiah Madlock 4-104, Connor Cross 6-83, Parker Sutherland 6-81, Carsen Newton 3-13, Gabe Egeland 2-25, Miles Parlet 2-5.

Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com