East Union’s Nikko Hisatomi gained 58 first-quarter yards Friday and scored a touchdown before leaving the game due to injury.

Enter Darrion Brown.

The Lancers junior took over the East Union ground game, gaining 142 yards on nine carries with three touchdowns to lead East Union to a 49-0 shellacking of visiting Modesto in non-league football action at Dino Cunial Stadium

“Brown stepped up,” Lancers coach Jason Stock said. “He’s on the 4x100 relay team, and he is a guy that can take the football and you saw what he could do with it. He has blazing speed.”

Brown scored on 1-, 24- and 70-yard runs.

“I saw my teammate (Hisatomi) went down, and I knew I had to step up,” Brown said. “I had to play hard.

“On that last touchdown, I saw the opening, got open, and ran for the touchdown.”

Gunnar Fay electrocuted the home crowd with a 75-yard punt return early in the second quarter.

“I saw the opening on the right side and I told my guy in front of me I was going to go right and he picked the right block and I cut it up and the gap was wide open.”

The defense was nails for East Union (1-0), holding the Panthers (0-2) to 65 total yards.

Lancers defensive end Nathan New spent a good part of the night in the Modesto backfield, racking up five sacks and recovering a fumble deep in Panthers territory to set up one of Brown’s 1-yard touchdown run. Jesse Martinez and Darren Ellis each added a sack. Erick Cortez snagged an interception.

“That fumble recovery was a high,” New said. “It felt so good.

“I could have scoop and scored, but it felt good just to get it.”

Elias Lopez returned an interception 35 yards for an East Union touchdown.

“I just had to go up and get it to score for my team,” Lopez said. “I knew I had it all the way when I saw my blockers.”

It was a night full of cramps for the players, with Modesto cramping up many times, much more than the Lancers.

“We try and stay away from two-way guys, and it was evident why tonight, as Modesto was cramping all night long,” Stock said. “We played a team that lacked discipline, and you can’t respond to that stuff. You can’t have stupid penalties.

“That’s what you are supposed to do to a team that you are expected to do those type of things to. That is the standard we play to. I try to tell the kids all the time that we play to our standard and we don’t play down to anybody. All I can ask for as a coach is that you give me all that you play as hard as you can the entire game, and we did a good job of that tonight.”

This was the opening game for East Union, with other local teams playing last week.

“We have been waiting five months, and it was tough for us to sit there and watch everyone play last week,” Stock said. “We are a young team, I know that, but we do have some returning players who are pretty good. We still have some things to work on.”

East Union hosts Johansen of Modesto on Friday night at 7.