Bellevue stomped on the gas and never let up in a 54-16 home victory over Colon Friday night. Beginning with a safety early in the first quarter, the Broncos (2-1) made the most of their 315 yards to hand the Magi (2-1) their first loss of the year.
Colon rushed for 95 yards and threw for 34 in the effort. See full box score here.
“It was a rough one for us tonight, but you know what, I’m going to give Bellevue all the respect they deserve,” Colon coach Darrin VandenBerg said. “They have a real nice senior class. You can tell they’ve been working in the offseason in the weight room and summer conditioning workouts and those sorts of things. Bellevue deserves the win hands down. I just hope some of the younger guys that were there on the sidelines and were able to see it will let that sink in a little bit and build a fire inside their guts for summer offseason workouts to make us better.”
Bellevue was better in every statistical category, but the gap wasn’t as wide as the final score might indicate. Colon struggled on third down, converting just once on seven tries. The Magi were 2-for-2 in the red zone, but the Broncos simply made bigger plays. Tyler Lane rushed for 154 yards and three touchdowns for Bellevue, including a 57-yard run. Four other players ripped off ground gains of at least 11 yards.
Colon junior quarterback Ryan Napier ran 12 times for 56 yards and a TD and completed 4 of 12 passes, but they totaled just 16 yards with an interception thrown in the mix. Daniel Alva completed one pass for the Magi for 18 yards. Colon gave up 23 yards on a pair of sacks and lost two fumbles.
“We made our fair share of mistakes, no doubt about that,” VandenBerg said. “Often times we were right there to make a play on defense. But we’d miss a tackle here, miss a tackle there and they’d bust a long play. We had some bad breaks, but I was proud of the kids. They stuck together as a team. It’s a nice group of kids we have and we learned a lot tonight.”