After pulling off a surprising second-half comeback win last week against United Township, the Sterling Golden Warriors carried their momentum to Friday’s home game against the Galesburg Silver Streaks.

The Golden Warriors had little trouble after stopping a pair of tough first-quarter drives from the Silver Streaks and cruised to a 48-0 win at Roscoe Eades Stadium’s Prescott Memorial Field.

The shutout is the second of the season for the Golden Warriors (3-2, 2-1 Western Big 6), and they return home next week for Homecoming against Alleman. Senior defensive end Wyatt Cassens led the shutout with all six of his tackles coming for loss, plus two sacks, and forced an intentional grounding call on Silver Streaks quarterback Grady Hickey on fourth down – all in the first half.

“Everyone was extremely focused when we had to be,” Cassens said. “When you’re in practice and you’re locked in, you got to know what you got to do, and you got to do it – if you don’t, you can’t. We got to put people in, and everyone did their job, and we didn’t have to keep switching people in and out. Everyone did their job well, and it was a good, fun game.”

Junior running back Cobey Shipma put Sterling on the board first with an 11-yard run with 2:09 to play, and senior running back Marice De La Cruz added another touchdown with 2.3 seconds left for a 12-0 lead after one quarter. It was Shipma’s first touchdown of the season, and he added another one from nine yards out with 9:06 to go in the third; he started that drive after he recovered a fumble 2:19 prior at the Silver Streaks’ 44.

“We were running the ball real good and the defense had a lot of good stops,” Shipma said. “There were a couple of good goal-line stops, too, and just a lot of good stuff we saw out here today that we can carry into next week.”

Galesburg, who methodically constructed the game’s first offensive drive that eventually sputtered at the Golden Warrior 26, put together a drive early in the second quarter that took them as far as the Golden Warrior 2-yard line, helped by a couple of close penalties by Sterling, but the drive was stopped by Cassens’ second sack of the game at the 12. After the turnover, junior quarterback Brady Berlin threw a pass to junior wide receiver Quincy Maas, who weaved around defenders midfield for a 52-yard touchdown strike and a 21-0 lead with 2:34 left in the first half.

“We had to stop that ball a lot,” Cassens said. “We just had to keep pushing that one hard. We just got to fight with their team and got to keep getting them short stops. It’s definitely important when you’re that close and trying to make a difference.”

Cassens continued his dominant game on defense later in the second quarter by recovering a bad Galesburg snap within the red zone, which led to junior wide receiver Jack Saathoff’s 14-yard TD reception from Berlin and a 26-0 lead at 1:09. Cassens began the second half showing what he can do on offense, too, bursting through for a 59-yard run (while Galesburg had 12 guys on the field) to set up a two-yard TD run of his own for a 34-0 lead.

“After the way we played in the second half last week, we wanted to carry the momentum back home,” Sterling coach Jon Schlemmer said. “Galesburg kind of stressed us in that first drive offensive and did a good job scheme-wise, but our kids held strong in the red zone, and when we got the stops, our offense picked us up and had a couple of big third downs on that first drive.”

Senior running back Brady Hartz capped the scoring with a two-yard touchdown during a fourth-quarter running clock.

Cassens led Sterling’s ground game with 90 yards on seven carries, while De La Cruz had 70 yards on six totes. Berlin finished the game with 128 yards on 9-for-12 passing.

Hickey finished with 150 passing yards on 17-for-31 passing, and Sterling held the Silver Streaks’ running game to net negative yardage.

Galesburg fell to 2-3 (1-2).

“The first half I thought our guys played pretty well,” Silver Streaks coach Shawn Hickey said. “I told the kids that it felt like the closest halftime score we felt like we were in [26-0]. We had opportunities and thought we led in time of possession. It wasn’t a dominating half, but we did a decent job of controlling the ball and moving it down the field, but just couldn’t punch it in.”