Football: Dukes no match for Robinson, Crusaders

DIXON – With 3 minutes left in the first quarter of Friday’s game against Rockford Lutheran, many Dixon fans started heading for the exits.

They didn’t miss much.

The Crusaders, up 42-0 at the time, went on to a 95-28 victory at A.C. Bowers Field. It was the Big Northern West opener for both teams.

“That’s a heck of a team we played,” Dixon coach Dave Smith said. “What can I say? That’s the No. 3-ranked team in the state, and we’re not there yet. That’s pretty clear.”

Leading the way for Lutheran (3-0) was senior running back James Robinson, a 5-foot-11, 215-pound ball of muscle and speed who shredded the Dixon defense all night. In less than two quarters of play, he had 17 carries for 454 yards and seven touchdowns.

He had a 58-yard touchdown run on the game’s first offensive play, and later added scoring runs of 96, 55, 55, 8, 5 and 5 yards. Robinson now has about 7,600 yards for his career, unofficially, and needs around 900 more to catch the all-time IHSA rushing leader, Westville’s Caleb Pratt, who is at 8,477.

His performance spoke for itself, in what had been a week filled with computer trash talking between some Crusaders and Dukes.

“There was a lot of stuff on Twitter, and people were messing with me, just talking, but I really wasn’t worried about it,” Robinson said. “I just wanted to play.”

When asked if there was much talk during the game, Robinson said, “In the first 2 minutes. There was none after that.”

Robinson was far from a one-man gang, however. Junior quarterback Peyton Womack threw touchdown passes of 56 and 44 yards to Marcus Hayes, and Hayes added a 6-yard TD run.

Logan Davis and Joshua Davis had TD runs of 10 and 75 yards, respectively. The Crusaders’ defense even got into the act, as linebacker Matt Anderson returned an interception 20 yards for a score.

Lutheran subs played from the 3-minute mark of the second quarter, when the score was 82-12.

“It gets hard sometimes because you want to be a good sport,” Lutheran coach Bruce Baszali said, “but yet you want James to have his carries for the record. You get torn in what to do, and you try to find a balance in that.”

Benny Mayes and Nyrel Sullivan scored first-half touchdowns for Dixon, while Arthur Cox had both of the Dukes’ scores after halftime.