WIAA state football championship preview: Diverse rushing attack fuels Spencer/Columbus offense

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By Paul Lecker
MarshfieldAreaSports.com

SPENCER – There are not many, if any, rushing attacks like the one Spencer/Columbus Catholic possesses.

The Rockets have five ball carriers that have at least 400 yards rushing this season, contributing to an offense that has amassed more than 4,200 yards on the ground in 13 games.

That powerful running game has propelled the Rockets to a perfect 13-0 record and into the WIAA Division 5 state championship game where they will take on Amherst (13-0) at 4 p.m. Thursday at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison.

Led by sophomore running back Hunter Luepke (1,212 yards, 24 touchdowns) and junior Noah Zastrow (1,088 yards, eight TDs), the Rockets have showed a diverse attack that leaves opponents wondering who is going to get the ball next.

Senior backs Hunter Hildebrandt (559 yards, five TDs) and Jonny Tomke (415 yards, seven TDs), and quarterback Calvin Lenz (401 yards, eight TDs) have added to the ground game that has accounted for 82 percent of the team’s offense.

“It really keeps everyone fresh,” Hildebrandt said of the diverse rushing attack. “We aren’t going to put up the big (individual) numbers. They don’t know who is going to get the ball and everyone one of us can run the ball just as good as the next person. It’s really an advantage for us.”

Luepke and Zastrow have had the majority of the big plays in the running game, with Tomke spelling each in a reserve role. Hildebrandt tends to be the guy plowing up the middle, and a lot of the plays are set up so that Lenz could keep it as well.

“They don’t know who’s getting the ball and it’s really hard for the defense to key on one guy,” Luepke said. “We can go on to the next and going through the lineup like that has been really effective against the defenses.”

The depth of ball carriers has been helpful on defense as well for Spencer/Columbus. Many of the Rockets play both sides of the ball, so being able to have a diversity of backs has been beneficial throughout the game.

“We talk about having horizontal balance, stretching a team horizontally across the field by being able to attack different gaps with different types of plays and different types of running backs,” SC coach Jason Gorst said. “It allows us to stay fresh and allows us to get a guy off the field and rest up for defense a little bit without missing a beat on offense.”

Gorst said he and his coaching staff made a point of getting as many people as possible involved so that the Rockets could create the depth they knew they would need as the season rolled on.

“We created that depth early in camp where instead of going first-team, second-team, we tried to split into two equal teams,” Gorst said. “We had two quarterbacks and six running backs handling the ball every single day and working against each other. Doing it that way creates some depth, rather than your first team taking the bulk of the reps and your second team getting what’s left over.”