It took a couple of weeks, but Riverside’s football team is starting to hit on all cylinders.
The Pirates, who shut out Indian Lake 24-0 last week, dominated host Bethel 34-7 on Friday in a Three Rivers Conference opener.
Riverside is now 2-2 overall and 1-0 in the league. The Bees drop to 0-4, 0-1.
“This is how I thought we would play at the start of the season,” said Riverside head coach Bryce Hodge. “But we faced some adversity and it took us some time to find a groove. I am proud of the guys for the way they have responded the last two weeks. Our focus was to carry over some momentum from last week and we were able to do that.”
The Pirates, who led 27-0 at halftime, were very balanced on offense. They finished with 205 passing yards and 200 rushing yards.
“We wanted to take what they were giving us,” said Hodge. “We had success running the ball early and then they started to stack the box. That opened up the passing game for us.”
The Pirates opened the scoring with 20 seconds remaining in the first period. Myles Platfoot found Walker Whitaker for a 53-yard touchdown. Isaac Bender added the extra point to make it 7-0.
Riverside then added three touchdowns in the final 5:04 of the first half to break the game open.
Warren Shockey scored on a 5-yard TD run and then on a 33-yard run before Whitaker went in from seven yards out to give Riverside a 27-0 lead at the break.
“We started a little slow, but we were able to turn it on in the second quarter,” said Hodge.
The Pirates made it 34-0 with a 61-yard TD pass from Platfoot to Simon Godwin with 3:26 left in the third quarter.
Bethel scored its lone touchdown on a 2-yard run with 2:15 remaining in the game.
Shockey ran for 119 yards on 19 carries to fuel the Riverside ground attack.
Platfoot was 7-of-12 passing for 163 yards.
Godwin made three catches for 131 yards and Whitaker had two catches for 54 yards.
Defensively, Godwin had five tackles, with two for loss, and picked off a pass to lead Riverside. Skyler Hudson recorded eight tackles, Dominik Stotler and Whitaker each had seven tackles and Tyler Knight added five tackles.
The Pirates are back in action Friday at Northridge.