Rapid River junior Lame Olson looks to make a pass against Superior Central on Oct. 3, 2025 at Rapid River School. (Victoria Coppock/Daily Press)

RAPID RIVER – With extreme effort from both teams, the Rapid River Rockets ended up taking a 36-14 win over the Superior Central Cougars here Friday

The Rockets had a total of 241 passing yards and another 149 on the ground.

To start the game, Alex Shiverdecker for the Rockets sacked Cougars’ quarterback Will Spranger.

The first touchdown was a pass from Joseph Thorbahn to Coen Smith, who added the two-point conversion for an 8-0 lead with 7:17 left in the first quarter.

In the second quarter, Jared Huskey had a touchdown at 10:11 to make it 14-0.

Then at 6:40, Spranger got a TD, leaving the score at 14-6.

Later in the quarter Rapid River’s Brady Schram got a TD for a 20-6 cushion. Soon after, Gavin Vining scored to bring the Cougars within 20-14.

From the beginning of the third to the end of the fourth Rapid River really kicked it in to prevent further scoring from the Cougars as it managed to hold the opponents score steady and gained 16 points to secure the decision.

At the end of the game, Rockets’ assistant coach Joe Smith said:

“Well, the game plan was actually to spread them out. We thought we’d be able to throw on them, and defensively we knew that they only had one key player and that it was their quarterback, who is a fast kid which we know from track. Our goal was really to shut him down, which we didn’t really do in the first half too much since they kept running up the gut.

” At halftime, the coaches kind of got together and came up with a new plan and slowed them down to the second half. But going into the game, we thought we’d be able to just to run a 4-4 and shut that down, but we had a little problem with it.”

The Rockets’ next game is at Brimley Friday. The Cougars visit Stephenson Friday.