‘Duce’ is aces as Ridley runs past Springfield

NETHER PROVIDENCE — Not once all night did the PA announcer at George L. King Field correctly identify Ridley running back Dylan Staley when he touched the football.

One thing’s for certain, however: No one will screw up his name again.

Staley was the Ridley offense Friday night. Every. Last. Bit.

“Duce,” as he’s appropriately called by Green Raiders coach Dave Wood, totaled 158 yards rushing on 17 carries and added a 22-yard reception while scoring a pair of touchdowns to lead Ridley to a 22-6 win over Springfield in the Central League opener for both teams.

“When you look at where we are offensively, we have a new quarterback for the fourth year in a row, so we need our backs to run the ball well,” Wood said. “Staley really did a great job tonight. Malachi (Williams) ran the ball well, too, and Gavin Kingsborough gives us a third good punch.”

Take away Staley’s 180 total yards of offense and Ridley would have totaled 66 yards of offense.

In fact, the second highest yardage total for the Green Raiders was by some guy with the last name “Penalty.”

In all seriousness, Ridley totaled a whopping 112 yards on 13 penalties.

“The penalties put us in bad situations,” Wood said. “We were lucky enough that we regrouped, but we can’t do that week-in and week-out in this league and expect to win football games.”

Staley opened the scoring for the Green Raiders midway through the first quarter when he plowed through the Cougars defense from five yards out to make it 6-0.

Later in the first half, he ran a wheel route down the far sideline and hauled in a pass from Jack Grace on fourth down to get Ridley into field goal position, setting up a 20-yard field goal by Chris Vinci as the first-half clock expired.

Staley, misidentified as another player all night over the public address system, iced the game with a 63-yard touchdown scamper halfway through the fourth quarter to make it 22-6.

“I didn’t even hear them calling me the wrong name,” Staley said. “Somebody told me on the sideline that it kept happening, but I never really noticed it. All I was focused on to do was running the football, finding my lanes and doing my part to helping my team win.”

He more than did his part for Ridley (2-0, 1-0), which has gotten off to a much faster start this season than last.

On the other side of the ball though, the Raiders had a wealth of contributions.

The defense stymied the Springfield running game, limiting it to just 37 yards on 18 carries. And although the Cougars’ passing game was clicking in the second quarter, a halftime adjustment by the Green Raiders led to three interceptions, including one by Jack Wills that he returned 40 yards for a touchdown on the first play of the fourth quarter.

That opened up what had been a very close game to that point.

“We switched from playing a zone to more of a man-to-man in the second half and that made a huge difference,” Wills said. “On my interception, though, their receiver was running a quick five-yard out and our linebacker Blaise Harris was cutting under him, so I went over the top. Blaise tipped it and I got it and, well, there was a lot of room in front of me.”

Alex Scarinno scored the lone touchdown for Springfield (0-2, 0-1) on an eight-yard pass from Kevin Rechner in the second quarter, tying the score 6-6.

Rechner had a great drive, going 6-for-7 for 41 yards and the touchdown, showing a glimmer of the offense coach Chris Britton envisioned for the Cougars.

“We have things to work on, but I’m proud of my guys,” Britton said. “I thought our conditioning was better tonight. But hats off to Ridley, they’re a really good team and we have take losing to them as a learning experience. But this is a step in the right direction.”