Red Devils down Indians

This was a slugfest that turned into a one-sided fight — courtesy of the Red Devils.

Richmond played textbook football for two quarters, sustaining drives on offense and never letting them get going on defense.

The result? A 47-34 victory over Anderson, the first for Matt Holeva as the Red Devils’ head coach.

“It feels great to get this first ‘W,’” said senior Skyler Coleman.

“ ... It felt great to finally have coach with a smile on his face after a Friday night.”

Holeva had plenty of reasons to smile at the Red Devils’ second half.

Richmond trailed 34-33 at halftime after 10 touchdowns were scored through the first two quarters.

There were only two in the second half, though — and both belonged to the Red Devils. Taylor Kidd gave RHS the lead on a 35-yard scoring run early in the fourth quarter, and Ben Parrish cemented the victory with his 3-yard run with 1:26 remaining.

Parrish scored twice, but he actually visited the end zone four times. Parrish had two long punt returns negated by flags.

“I just have to thank my teammates for the blocking,” said Parrish, who also caught a 44-yard touchdown from Justyn Curtis for the final score of the first half. “Even though some of them didn’t go the way we wanted them to, I’m happy.

“We stuck together. It feels great. Smiles on everybody’s faces.”

Kidd carried the ball 23 times for a game-high 145 yards and scored twice. Curtis found five receivers for 210 yards and three touchdowns.

Holeva credited the Red Devil passing game for keeping Richmond in the game in the first half. RHS took an early 8-0 lead after a 60-yard TD from Curtis to Jacob Flood, but the next three scores went to Anderson.

Two of those touchdowns were helped by Richmond fumbles. Curtis Wilson turned a fake punt into a 41-yard touchdown pass, and the Anderson senior connected on the next drive to Chris Lemon for a 3-yard score.

Vincente Avalos ended the Indian scoring flurry when he scooped a Richmond fumble and returned it 61 yards.

“Some crazy things happened in the first half,” Holeva said. “The defense again, despite the score on there, didn’t play too poorly. Some of those points were kind of crazy things that happened, turnovers that put them in tough situations.

“Once our passing game allowed us to get back into it, we felt like we could run the ball tonight.”

Run it they did, with Kidd leading the charge.

He wasn’t alone. Anthony Smith broke loose for a 43-yard touchdown run in the second quarter, and Vaughn Eversole earned a critical second-half first down with a 21-yard carry.

Jalen Bailey also hauled in a 58-yard TD pass from Curtis, and Kidd scored on a 5-yard run in the second quarter.

“We did our assignments all week. We worked hard,” Kidd said. “The O-line, they put in a lot of effort. We just went in there and we got it in.”

Richmond’s defense did its part, too.

The Red Devils shut Anderson down in the second half, keeping them off the scoreboard through the final two quarters and limiting the Indians to just two first downs in the second half.

“We just came together as a team, and I think you saw that unification finally click,” said senior Korey Creech. “It was 110 percent effort.

“(In the second half) you just saw the whole sideline get up, the coaches got up. We just all came together as a team.”

Enough so to start 1-0 in the North Central Conference for the first time since 2006.

“We just came out and played Red Devil football,” Coleman said.

Richmond (1-2) returns to action next Friday with a road trip to Marion.

The Giants are 2-1 overall and 1-0 in the NCC after halting New Castle 36-15.

“I give the kids a lot of credit,” Holeva said. “We talk about the ebbs and flows of the game, and I thought we never got too high and we never got too low.

“We kind of just kept hacking away and good things were going to happen.”