HOLMEN — Could the Holmen High School football team’s offense shake off a tough performance from last week, and could its defense continue to be as disruptive as it was the first three games?
Those were two questions for the Vikings to answer when they lined up against a Sparta team that led unbeaten Logan in the fourth quarter before a difficult ending resulted in a 22-point loss — its first of the season — last week.
Holmen responded by rushing for 329 yards and allowing the Spartans a total of 108 rushing and passing yards while using a 28-point third-quarter explosion to record a 45-0 victory on a rainy Friday night at Empire Stadium.
The victory kept the Vikings (4-0 overall, 2-0 MVC) unbeaten as they shift their focus to Reedsburg (3-1, 1-1) in a big home game next week.
“We needed to get our offense going again,” Holmen coach Travis Kowalski said after rushing yards were tough to come by in a 19-15 win over Onalaska last week. “Teams are really loading up the box and trying to take away our inside run game, so we had to do better at attacking the outside perimeter.
“We did that tonight, both to the left and to the right.”
Senior Jack Barth rushed for 115 yards and three touchdowns on eight carries, and senior Eli Kane added 94 yards and three more touchdowns on eight carries as the Vikings tore up the Spartans (2-2, 1-1) and wasted little time in breaking open a 17-point game with four touchdowns in the third quarter.
Sparta was held to 35 total yards in the second half as Holmen put away a running clock and posted their sixth straight victory in the head-to-head series.
Senior Ayden Smith set the defensive tone with two first-half sacks and turned one of them into a strip and fumble recovery. That play came just three snaps after a 4-yard touchdown run by Barth and gave the Vikings a first down at the Sparta 22. Three plays later, Barth burst through the right side of the line and went 23 yards for another touchdown and 14-0 lead early in the second quarter.
Smith’s second sack resulted in a 10-yard loss on a third-and-10 snap and pushed Sparta back into its own territory after moving to the Holmen 44. The Spartans tried a fake punt on fourth down, but the completed pass was short of the yard to gain.
“They’ve been able to throw the ball a lot, and there was a chance they could catch us off guard, but they never did,” Smith said. “I got a couple sacks, and they got us all fired up and ready to go, and we kept pushing forward.”
Kane broke things open by twice reaching the left-side edge in the third quarter and completing scoring runs of 30 and 32 yards.
He has now rushed for 441 yards and scored nine touchdowns for a team averaging 288 rushing yards and 40.3 points per game.
“We just figured out where we could run and tonight that was outside,” Kane said. “They did a good job of shutting down the inside. We had to switch up formation, use the two good receivers we have, read wht they were doing and get the blocks we needed.”
Senior offensive lineman Jagger Jepson said a shift in attitude during practice was part of the difference between the 134 yards they gained against Onalaska and the 329 they had against the Spartans.
“There was a big difference in practice this week,” he said. “We were focused every day on getting better, and I think we did that. Communication and knowing how (the Spartans) shift and really understanding our playbook were important for us.”
Senior quarterback Colin Williams took a step forward by rushing six times for 54 yards and completing three passes — two to Barth — for 61 yards.
Holmen’s defense allowed 46 rushing yards on 23 attempts and didn’t give Everett Laufenberg — he averaged 152.4 passing yards per game with six TD throws in the first three weeks — time to find much of anything. He wound up completing 6 of 11 passes for 52 yards.
“Anytime you can get sacks and pressures on the quarterback with three or four guys like we did, it makes things easier on the secondary, and your pass coverage gets that much better,” Kowalski said. “(Smith) getting those sacks gets in the quarterback’s head, and then you have someone else coming off the edge, and everyone’s flying around right now.
“It was interesting because (the Spartans) threw the ball a lot last week against Logan. We figured they’d take their shots tonight. They did, but they didn’t complete ’em. We couldn’t let them have those plays.”
