RIPON — Sacramento High’s Lamar Radcliffe rumbled up the middle 75 yards for a touchdown the first time he touched the ball Friday night. By the time the smoke cleared, the Dragons’ 6-foot-1, 245-pound running back had amassed 168 rushing yards and four touchdowns to lead visiting Sacramento to a 35-7 win over host Ripon Christian in non-league action.

Radcliffe needed 16 carries for those 168 yards and his touchdown runs were of 2, 9, 14 and 75 yards.

And he is just a sophomore.

“He is a stud,” Dragons coach Justin Reber said of Radcliffe. “He is going to be a big-time guy. We are blessed to have him.

“Once he figures out what he can do he is going to be really good.” 

The Knights (1-1) started off the second with a bang. Derek Van Elderen (12 carries, 129 yards) raced 71 yards up the right sideline in front of the Knights bench for a touchdown on the first play of the second half to make the score 28-7. That one run would account for more than one-third of Ripon Christian’s total yardage of 198 yards.

“The line really put it out there on that one,” Van Elderen said. “They got their blocks down and had a wide-open gap for me. I can’t take all the credit.

“At the very beginning I thought I would be caught but once I got going downfield I knew I had it.”

A combination of the Ripon Christian defense tightening and Sacramento (2-0) shooting itself in the foot – the Dragons had 160 yards in penalties going into the final quarter — allowed the Knights hold Sacramento scoreless in the third quarter. The Dragons finished with 195 penalty yards.

“We will watch film and correct the things we can correct,” Reber said. “Everyone is going to have penalties. I am not going to stress about penalties. For me it is more about the dumb penalties like talking when you shouldn’t be talking.

“But our running back got called for leading with the head when he just ran over the kid. Those are things that we can’t really do anything about.”

Knights coach Phil Grams was pleased with the way his team did not fold.

“That is a good football team over there,” Grams said. “I feel really good about our ball club. They could have laid down after halftime but we came out in the second half hard. We had to take some chances in the second half. We got out of some of the normal stuff that we do and we were able to execute.

“There is a speed and a size difference between us and Sac High, but our guys are good football players. We have our goals ahead of us and a whole season ahead of us and we are going to be all right as a football club.”

Micah De Jong led the Ripon Christian defense with 12 stops followed by Zach Brouwer with six tackles and Brady Grondz and Jay Hoekstra with five apiece. 

SCORING SUMMARY

Sacramento   14 14 0 7 — 35

Ripon Christian 0 0 7 0 — 7

First quarter

S — Lamar Radcliffe 75 run (Christian Delgado kick), 11:28

S — Radcliffe 2 run (Delgado kick), 3:36

Second quarter

S — Radcliffe 9 run (Delgado kick), 10:12

S — Lamont Johnson-Burrell 45 pass from Naaman Branyan (Delgado kick), 5:24

Third quarter

R — Derek Van Elderen 71 run (Grant Sonke kick) 11:41

Fourth quarter

S — Radcliffe 14 run (Delgado kick), 9:08