The excitement of starting the 20th season in program history faded early for the Pella Christian football team, as they fell 56-0 to Des Moines Christian in a game heard live on the KRLS2 stream at KNIAKRLS.com.

The Lions offense wasted little time building up an advantage over the Eagles, scoring twice in the first quarter and four times in the second to take a 42-0 lead into halftime. Out of the break, Des Moines Christian added a touchdown in each of the third and fourth quarters to earn the win by the largest margin in the series between the schools since 2017. Pella Christian struggled to move the ball against the Lions defense, turning the ball over five times and recording just 83 yards of total offense. Coming off a disappointing scrimmage against Newton last week, Eagles head coach Rich Kacmarynski said the team’s inability to execute hurt them in the loss.

“I think our effort level was better, but our execution level is still very poor. I can’t speak much for the defense right now because I haven’t watched the film and I was really focused on our offense tonight, but offensively, we just did not execute things very well. We did not execute our blocks, we did not run our routes well, so we were just not a good offensive football team tonight.” 

Pella Christian opens the season with an 0-1 record and will face another difficult test with the Highway 163 rivalry at PCM next Friday.