The Ankeny football team took care of business on Friday.
The eighth-ranked Hawks not only rolled to a 49-19 victory over visiting Cedar Rapids Washington in their regular-season finale, but they jumped out to a big early lead that allowed coach Jeff Bauer to rest some of his starters for the Class 5A playoffs.
“It was good to let some of the second-team guys get more reps,” said Bauer. “We haven’t had a lot of opportunities to do that this year.”
Wide receiver Devon Akers was one of the starters who went to the bench early in the game. Akers, who is playing with a torn labrum that he suffered during a win at Cedar Rapids Prairie on Sept. 29, caught an 82-yard touchdown pass from Luke Anderson on the game’s first play from scrimmage.
“We actually had that play planned for awhile now so it was great to execute it,” said Akers. “Luke launched a great ball and I finished it off. The play took awhile to develop, so shoutout to the O-line for holding up.”
Bauer was hoping to get Akers out of the game to keep the Hawks’ deep-ball threat fresh for the playoffs. The senior is averaging 20.7 yards per catch.
“We were hoping to limit Devon tonight, so we gave him a good chance to start off the game (with a big play),” he said. “We were shocked when they were in Cover Zero. So it worked out pretty well.”
Daniel Larmie scored on an 11-yard run to give Ankeny a 14-0 lead midway through the first quarter. Caden Henkes added a 4-yard scoring run later in the period, then dashed 19 yards for another touchdown in the second quarter.
“It was different to not have to worry the whole game like we have for eight weeks now,” Bauer said. “It was good to take care of business here and move on.”
Carson Sommerfeld scored on a 2-yard shovel pass from Anderson to extend the Hawks’ advantage to 35-0 at halftime. Larmie added another touchdown run in the second half before Abe Smith closed out Ankeny’s scoring with a 72-yard sprint to the end zone on his only carry of the game.
“It was definitely good to build up some confidence before the first round after our loss (at Valley) last week,” Akers said.
Anderson completed 9-of-11 passes for 210 yards. Evan Irlmeier had three catches for 62 yards.
Larmie ran 18 times for 106 yards, while Henkes added 60 yards on 12 carries. Those two have now combined for 1,562 rushing yards on the season.
“These are the hardest games to focus on and not be looking ahead, but I thought we did a pretty good job of staying focused and doing what we needed to do,” Bauer said.
Ankeny closed out the regular season with a 6-3 record. The Warriors finished with a 1-8 mark.
The Hawks notched the win without suffering any additional major injuries.
“We should be good–knock on wood,” Bauer said. “Obviously, that was the goal.”
Ankeny moved up to seventh in the final RPI rankings from the Iowa High School Athletic Association. The first-round pairings will be announced on Saturday at 10 a.m., but it appears likely that the Hawks will host No. 10 Johnston in a rematch of a game from Sept. 15 that Ankeny won, 16-10.
The Dragons defeated Ankeny in last year’s quarterfinals, 23-13.
“We’re excited to find out who we’ll be playing,” Bauer said.
