EDWARDSVILLE – Dionte Rodgers meant everything to Edwardsville's football team Friday night.
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Rodgers, a sophomore running back, got his night started with a huge 73-yard run on the Tigers' first possession of their home opener against Rock Island, and from there, scored five touchdowns and rushed for nearly 300 yards en route to EHS' 48-27 win over the Rocks of the Western Big 6 Conference to run Edwardsville's record to 2-0 on the season. Rock Island fell to 1-1 on the year.
“He has just enough speed to run away from tacklers,” said Tiger coach Matt Martin about Rodgers. “I was teasing (EHS offensive coordinator Doug Heinz) 'you are so stubborn'; he kept running inside zone, inside zone. He had faith. The reason you keep doing that when it's not looking good is because he knew we weren't going to the right people.
“He kept coaching the kids up and trying to get them to get a hat on a hat and good things will happen. He was right.”
Martin felt the game was a lot closer than it seemed; the Rocks had bounced back from 14-0 down with a pair of last-minute touchdowns in the second term to forge a 14-14 tie going into halftime. “I just told them (at halftime) that if you execute better, give better effort and get more physical, good things will happen for you,” Martin said. “We still have a lot of new guys who haven't been under the Friday night lights, and they're still learning. I told them 'this is a make-or-break half for you.'
“We can look back at it and say 'we learned from it' or we can say 'we never came out and fought.' I told (Rock Island coach Brian Storz) 'you taught us some lessons' and we're going to have to learn from it if we want to be a better team.”
“We had guys there who were missing tackles,' Storz said, “and our offense didn't help our defense at times, either. Our kids battled; they got into a dogfight for sure tonight. We played a knock-em-out, drag-em-out tonight, and I think our kids will grow from this and get better as a football team.”
Rodgers scored on runs of 4, 4, 52, 6 and 21 yards; his longest run came early in the Tigers' first possession when he got a handoff from Brenden Springman and found an opening, not stopping until he gained 73 yards to help set up his first touchdown. He also had a run of 31 yards that set up his 21-yard TD run.
The Tigers also had a punt return Dayleon Harris midway through the second term that Harris almost scored on, but right before he crossed the goal line, the ball became loose and fell into the end zone, where another Tiger fell on the ball for a touchdown. Nathan Kolesa closed out the scoring on an interception return for a touchdown late in the final term.
The Tigers open Southwestern Conference play against Collinsville at Kahok Stadium at 7 p.m. Sept. 9.
