Fremd came onto its home field in the opening round of 8A playoffs to the theme from the movie “Halloween.”

The Vikings then leaned heavily on the spirit of Michael Meyers.

Fremd scored the first six times it had the ball and also forced four first-half turnovers as the Vikings rolled over Huntley 41-14 Friday in Palatine.

The fourth-seeded Vikings (9-1) will host Lyons next weekend in the second round. Lyons, which is seeded 13th, beat York 24-21 on a field goal with one second to play.

Fremd coach Lou Sponsel, whose team built a 41-0 halftime lead, said that his Vikings played clean football.

“We came out and played hard and played for each other,” Sponsel said. “We talked about learning from all the mistakes we made the first nine weeks and come out and play cleaner football. And for the most part, we did.”

Fremd quarterback Johnny O’Brien played just a half of football. The senior threw for three touchdown passes and ran for another touchdown.

“We had a great regular season,” said O’Brien, who was 12-of-18 passing for 188 yards.

“The message from our coaches was that we are 0-0 now. Rankings don’t matter and every team in the playoffs is a good team. We knew what we were getting into and we knew we had to play well. We executed well tonight and we are excited for the next round.”

Fremd didn’t need many offensive plays to build a 20-0 lead.

The Vikings scored their first touchdown on just three plays with Jayden Faulkner tallying on a four-yard run. Fremd scored its next touchdown on five plays with O’Brien connecting on a laser pass to Carter MacDonald for a three-yard touchdown.

Huntley (5-5) then out together its best offensive series of the night.

The Red Raiders drove to the Fremd 7-yard line. But on fourth-and-4, Fremd defensive back Marquan Brewster stepped in front of a Red Raiders receiver and picked off the pass. Brewster then took off and weaved his way to a 98-yard touchdown return.

“Our linemen had big enough pressure on the quarterback to make him get the ball off,” Brewster said. “He made a good throw and I just came up underneath it. I found some daylight and my teammates celebrated with me.”

Fremd then made a mad dash to a running clock by halftime.

O’Brien ran 9 yards for a touchdown. He also had scoring passes of 30 yards to Ben Riddle and a 10-yard pass to Brewster as the Vikings made it 41-0 at the break.

The Fremd defense also had a huge first half. The Vikings had interceptions from Brewster, Zach Tofilon and Troy Pepe along with a fumble recovery by RJ Davis.

“We take pride in stopping the run,” Pepe said. “This week in practice we had the freshmen up and they were running the scout team. They gave great looks and we knew what was coming and executed real well.”

The game was delayed for nearly 20 minutes early in the fourth quarter when Huntley wide receiver Kyle Ziebell was injured on an incomplete pass. Ziebell was taken away by ambulance to a local hospital as a precautionary measure.

Huntley did come away with two scores after that. Malik Carter (23-of-32 passing, 189 yards) threw an 18-yard touchdown pass to Connor Wade. William Laughlin later scored on a 10-yard run.

“I am really proud of this group,” Huntley coach Mike Naymola said. “They have been with me for all four of my years here as head coach and we put a lot of pressure on them to set up a certain standard and culture here. And they have been able to uphold that. I am also really looking forward to the future. We have a really have a good core coming back.”