Seneca’s Gunner Varland wasn’t sure how much he would play Friday against Dwight.

Missing school Tuesday and Wednesday because of illness, the senior quarterback didn’t start on defense, and the coaching staff wanted to see how he was going to hold up during the game.

He held up just fine, rushing for 100 yards on nine carries, scoring three touchdowns and leading the Irish to a 50-17 Chicagoland Prairie Conference win.

“I’m feeling wonderful right now,” Varland said after the win improved the Irish to 4-0, 1-0 in conference play. “It was rough being out. I wanted to come to school. Every day, I’m like, ‘Mom, I’m missing practice. I’ve got to go so I can play.’

“Coming here, I wasn’t sure if I was going to play. Coach tells me, ‘I don’t know when you’re going to be in.’ I made an opportunity of it.”

After Seneca fell behind 3-0, Varland scored from 30 yards to get the Irish on the board. He capped off the Irish’s next two drives with touchdown runs of 7 and 28 yards to give Seneca a 21-3 halftime lead.

“He really had a nice game for us,” said Seneca coach Terry Maxwell. “It was pretty cool to see him battle.”

Dwight (2-3, 0-2) opened Friday’s game with a 10-play, 66-yard drive that stalled on the Irish 8-yard line, highlighted by a Collin Bachand pass to Tysen Walker for 34 yards on third-and-6 from their own 44. Dwight kicker Erdi Gashi connected on a 28-yard field goal to give the Trojans a 3-0 lead.

After forcing a three-and-out, the Trojans drove into Irish territory again on 11 plays, but lost the ball after a sack and fumble that Seneca’s Wyatt Biffany recovered. Biffany had registered a tackle for loss on the previous play to put the Trojans into a passing situation on third-and-long.

He said the defensive stop helped turned the momentum after the Trojans had controlled nearly the first 10 minutes of the game.

“Any big play, a fumble, anything like that, it just really turns our guys around,” Biffany said. “For the past three games we’ve started off a little bumpy, and then we really get going. I feel like it takes that momentum swing.”

After the first quarter, the Irish outscored the Trojans 50-14. Along with Varland’s three touchdowns, Ethan Othon scored a pair of rushing TDs – one from 33 and another from 21. Cam Shriey and Brayden Simek tallied the other two scores for the Irish.

Shriey finished with 153 yards on 15 carries, and Othon tallied 104 yards on 11 carries to give the Irish three ballcarriers over the century mark.

“Dwight runs a lot of things, and they run them really well,” Maxwell said. “We can’t defend everything they do, because they have a multitude of things they do. Defensively we had to settle in, and offensively we had to adjust to their scheme.

“We figured out what was going to work with us, and we took what they could give us, and they struggled with our quarterback keep play, and then we started opening some things up from there.”

The Trojans got a couple big pass plays for touchdowns. Bachand connected with Joey Starks on a 29-yard touchdown pass and Joe Duffy for 68 yards for scores. Bachand finished 10-of-16 for 213 yards.

“I thought we got off to a good start offensively,” Dwight coach Luke Standiford said. “First drive, we drove the ball down and ended up kicking the field goal, got some points on the board. Our wide receivers made some plays. Collin was able to connect with his wide receiver corp and some of the shots we called.

“It just comes down to stopping their offense, which is hard to do. I thought we did a good job handling them in the first half, but they just wear you down is what they do.”