ROCKFORD – With a big game scheduled for Week 2, Dixon used its season opener to try to get in good shape for a revenge tilt.

It didn’t take long for the Dukes to figure out how to get tuned up for next week’s clash with Byron, having little trouble Friday with a 47-8 Big Northern Conference win over Rockford Lutheran.

The win comes a week before the Dukes get together with perennial conference power Byron, which is ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press Class 3A poll.

The Dukes, ranked No. 8 in Class 4A, led 41-0 at halftime and allowed positive yardage in only three of the Crusaders’ first-half plays.

“We always go into the game thinking that we’re going to win, but we were still dialed in and we knew that there had to be a game to be played,” Dukes senior running back and linebacker Landon Knigge said. “Pretty much, we came out here and did our business and did what we needed to do.”

Lutheran fumbled away the opening kickoff, and Knigge took Dixon’s first play from scrimmage 15 yards for a quick 7-0 lead. Knigge followed that after Lutheran went three-and-out with a 42-yard punt return for another touchdown and a 13-0 lead after 3 minutes of play.

Dixon pushed its lead to 34-0 after one quarter after two touchdown passes from Jagger Kemp to Logan Mershon and Jake Zepzauer; Kemp added a four-yard TD run with 2:48 to go in the quarter.

Lutheran’s lone score came from a 1-yard run from Richard Anderson with 90 seconds left in a running-clock third quarter.

“We just had to keep the communication going,” senior lineman Jayden Neal said. “We have a job to do and we have to do that every single play, 100 percent of the time.”

The Dukes finished last year as conference runner-up to Byron. The Tigers opened their season Thursday with little trouble at Rock Falls in a 63-0 win. Last year’s contest between the Dukes and Tigers was a nail-biter with a 29-28 Byron win, one where the Tigers came from behind with less than 30 seconds to play.

That Week 8 game continues to weigh heavily on the minds of the Duke players who are seeking a bit of revenge.

“We’ll have things locked in and having our attention span on things and knowing what to do,” Knigge said. “I think it will be another great game just like last year. It’s going to be a physical, hard-playing game between two good teams.

“We always try to focus on discipline and everybody doing our jobs. If everybody does their job, we all succeed, and if one fails, we all fail.”