Kyle Kurtz hands off to fullback Tyler Smith in Friday's season finale and 34-0 win over Willard to give the Truckers a .500 finish. Smith scored two plays later for the final touchdown of the night.

 

NORWALK- The Norwalk Truckers drove straight down the field to start its contest with Willard by starting at its 10 only to fumble at the Crimson Flashes 2-yard line.

Instead of letting that play a mental factor, the Truckers in turn responded with an offensive explosion of 568 yards and a 34-0 rout of the Flashes to finish the season with a 5-5 overall record and 3-4 in the Northern Ohio League. The .500 mark will join the 1978, 1998 and 2004 teams as the lone "break even" teams since the drought of winning seasons started 30 seasons ago. The 564 yards is the 2nd most in school history, behind the 576 yards in week 9 of the 1998 season which also came against Willard (55-35 win).

After the turnover, Norwalk got the ball back and after missing last week's game with an ankle sprain, senior Tyler Smith got free for a 47-yard touchdown run at the 7:29 mark of the opening quarter to kick start the scoring as Kyle Kurtz added the first of four extra points for a 7-0 lead. Just over six minutes later, Kurtz threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to senior Anthony Supeck with 1:23 left in the quarter for a 14-0 lead.

The scoring then bogged down for quite some time, as the Truckers took the two-touchdown lead into the break and nearly into the fourth quarter until Kurtz found Jacob McKenzie on an 11-yard touchdown pass with 2:38 left in the third quarter for a 21-0 lead. With the pass, Kurtz became the all-time leader for touchdowns thrown in a career with 30 while earlier becoming the all-time leader in yardage with another pass to Supeck.

The outgoing senior already had the career completions-attempts record entering the game and all four records were previously held by Cornell Smith, the Truckers signal caller from 2001-2003.

Trent Ringle, who had a huge night, finally got into the scoring act with his 10th touchdown of the season on a 4-yard run with 9:21 left in the game, but the extra point attempt was blocked for a 27-0 lead. Smith then closed out the scoring and a 70-yard drive with a 4-yard run of his own with 3:55 left to close out the scoring.

Meanwhile, the Norwalk defense limited Willard to just 86 yards passing and 106 rushing, however, it was no secret a big part of that was the devastating injury loss to senior quarterback Zac Thortnon during the week. Thornton had impressive stats throughout the season, but broke his hand during the week and did not play. Backup Seth Cochran filled in and went 10-of-24 with 86 yards and two interceptions with Doug Opatken catching six passes for 43 yards while adding 39 yards rushing.

For Norwalk, Kurtz went 10-of-17 for 172 yards and two touchdowns with McKenzie catching four passes for 76 yards while Spencer Krebs added three catches for 54 yards. Krebs narrowly missed the school record for receiving yardage in a season, as his 716 yards (45 catches) will finish six yards shy of the mark of 722 held by Chris Harkness in 1984.

Ironically, Kurtz unofficially finished with 1,545 yards passing this season which is a career-high while finishing with 117 completions, the lowest total in his three seasons as the starting quarterback.

The biggest story of the night, however, was the Norwalk running attack which picked up 396 yards on 49 attempts, which finishes just 55 yards shy of the school record for rushing yards in a game held by the 1974 state championship team (451 vs. Clyde).

A week after setting a new career-high with 191 yards at Fostoria, Ringle finished with 221 rushing yards on 30 carries to give him his fifth 100+ yard game of the season. His unofficial total of 946 yards is the most since James Lover (last 1,000-yard rusher) went for 1,352 yards in 1983. The senior was set back by a cast on his broken hand early in the season, as he had just 18 yards on 19 attempts after the first two games, but finished with 928 yards over the final eight games (116.0 yards per game).

Kurtz added 91 rushing yards on just seven attempts and finished with 204 yards rushing for the season while Smith chipped in 72 yards on nine attempts to finish with 302 yards rushing and 3 touchdowns.