Pella Christian racked up 373 yards of offense and made several critical defensive stands last night in a 31-0 victory over Iowa City Regina in the opening round of the class 1A football playoffs in a game heard live on 92.1 KRLS.

After going three-and-out on the opening series of the game, the Eagles recovered a Regal fumble at their own 46 yard line, then dipped into the bag of tricks for a 54-yard touchdown pass from wide receiver Peyton Ritzert to Jack Fancher. Coach Rich Kacmarynski says that they’ve been working on that play for about a month and felt like it was the perfect time to put it into action.

“It’s nice to go with something like that after a turnover and a quick change. We had great field position, so we thought it was the right time for it. Peyton executed it well and Fancher had the big catch. Jack’s got some great speed so they weren’t able to run him down, which was really nice.”

The Eagles defense came up with two critical stops on the Regals next two drives, stopping a fourth and one from inside the 20 and a fourth and goal from the two.

Isaac Kacmarynski hit Fancher on a 15-yard scoring strike just before halftime, then found Ritzert from 14 yards out midway thru the third quarter. Pella Christian got two more fourth down stops in the second half, added a Fancher field goal late in the third quarter, then capped the scoring on Kacmarynski’s 42-yard pick six with less than two minutes to go.

The Eagles ran for 181 yards and threw for 192 as they improve to 8-1 on the season. They’ll be on the road next Friday night in the round of 16 against an opponent to be determined. The Iowa High School Athletic Association will release the next round of pairings Saturday morning.