Football shutout against Ripon

The Ripon College Redhawks increased their overall record against the Lawrence University Vikings this last Saturday in a 52-0 win at Ripon College in the rivalry’s 118th meeting. The Vikings put up a good fight against them but came up short on a few must-need situations.

Being the state’s oldest college football rivalry, the game tends to get a lot of attention. The guys spent the entire week getting hyped up about the game and making sure their minds were zoned in. Their goal was to take home the trophy after a 17-year drought. Unfortunately, the Vikings fell short on that goal. However, with every game comes some awesome highlights no matter the outcome of the game itself.

Lawrence was able to drive into Ripon territory four times, three of those times were into the red zone. Each drive was hard fought and hard stopped. Sophomore Jordan Jenkins lead the offense on the ground with 12 carries for 64 yards. This game puts him at a season total of 120 yards over 25 carries, giving him a 4.8 yds/carry average. He was accompanied by first-year from Colorado, Ty Kimsey, who had four carries and 43 yards total.

Sophomore Ethan Simmons has been hard to stop all season. Ripon limited his success on Saturday, but Simmons still managed a huge 70-yard kickoff return early on in the game that gave the Vikings the edge that they needed. While that return put the offense on Ripon’s 17-yard line, the offensive series was stopped with an interception.

Wyatt Lee, sophomore captain, had himself a game on Saturday as well. With a game-high 13 solo tackles, Lee continues to hold the top spot for most tackles in the 2018 NCAA DIII football season, with 78 solo tackles and 69 assisted tackles for a total of 147. He is one tackle ahead of Grinnell’s senior linebacker Ryan Slager. Lee averages 16.3 tackles per game. The record for tackles in a season is held by 1988 All-American Chris Lindfelt who racked up 172 tackles in his last season. The last Lawrence player to make over 100 tackles in a season was 2018 graduate, Jake Gostisha during his 2016 season. Gostisha had 107 tackles on that season. Lee would need 25 tackles in the Vikings last game for the season this Saturday in order to match the school record.

Junior Jasaad Graves has had a career best season and added seven tackles to the Viking’s defense this past weekend. He leads the team in sacks and has almost doubled his stats in all other areas. The defense fought hard, but despite that effort, came up short on the score board.

With all of these accomplishments listed above, the Vikings couldn’t put it together against the Redhawks. Ripon took a 35-point lead right away in the first half of the game, scoring once in the first and then three times in the second. In the second quarter, an interception followed by a fumbled snap on a punt in the next series gave Ripon a quick pair of touchdowns in the second quarter. Lawrence responded in the second with a 47-yard field goal attempt but missed as the kick hooked wide left.

In the second half, Lawrence drove into Ripon territory three times, but ended up turning it over on downs each time. The Ripon Redhawks managed to take advantage of key moments during the game to capitalize on the Vikings.