With a win over Sioux City West on Thursday night, the East High Black Raiders claimed the 2025 ‘City Championship’ by sweeping the three other metro schools this season — Bishop Heelan, North and West.
At 4-0, East has set itself up for top seeding in the Class 5A playoffs, but now must put together a second half of the season that resembles the first.
The Black Raiders’ season grew more impressive on Thursday night at Elwood Olsen Stadium as East beat West 42-0 in non-district play.
“Every kid is an integral piece on this team,” said East head coach Michel Winklepleck. “We got out to a lead and thought it would be a good opportunity to get a bunch of other kids some playing time, because everyone on this team has shown up and put the work in day in, day out.
“I thought, for the most part, everyone did a great job. It’s been a while since we’ve played all the city schools like we did this year.”
East’s last 4-0 start came in 2022.
West received the opening kick and went three-and-out.
East needed just two plays to score and go up 7-0 on a 26-yard touchdown pass from senior quarterback Cal Jepsen to Isaiah Grant, and the route was on.
East took a 35-0 lead into halftime.
After the intermission, the Black Raiders used all but two minutes of the third quarter’s running clock to set up a six-yard touchdown pass from Callan Koch to Dae Shaun Simmons as the East back-ups took over in the second half.
Koch finished 4 of 10 passing for 25 yards after he took over for Jepsen, who completed 12 of 14 passes for 243 yards and two TDs.
While the East defense pitched its first shutout of the season, the Black Raider special teams again contributed to the win.
East has blocked a punt in three of its four games this season and in the one it didn’t — against Bishop Heelan — junior Chris Ford returned two kickoffs for scores.
“We talk all the time about being great in all three phases,” Winklepleck said. “We play our best guys on special teams. A lot of times, we’ll give guys a break on offense or defense before we’ll take them out on special teams. That’s where you win and lose football games, and the kids understand that.”
On Thursday, West was forced to punt out of its own end zone and couldn’t hold off a wave of Black Raiders that resulted in a blocked kick and recovery for a Kuper Fritz touchdown to make it 14-0 with 6 minutes, 15 seconds left in the first.
“I didn’t even know if the play was dead or not, I just rushed (the punter), heard the block, saw the ball laying there and picked it up,” Fritz said of his touchdown. “This win gives us a lot of confidence and momentum, but now we have a stretch where we’re going up against a lot of the Des Moines area schools, so we really need to lock in these next few weeks.
“Our goal is at least to host a playoff game.”
A big punt return by sophomore Quintin Pollard set up a 10-yard scoring run for junior Amos Collins before the end of the first to put East up 21-0.
West (1-3) held the ball for just over a minute before senior Jacob Breyfogle gave East the ball back with an interception, and shortly thereafter, Jepsen hit Pollard for a 35-yard TD.
As the Black Raiders started subbing players, junior Kevin Bock III scored on a 14-yard TD run with eight minutes remaining before half to make it 35-0.
Back III was the game’s leading rusher with nine carries for 44 yards.
East’s total yardage on offense approached 350 yards while the Black Raider defense held West to under 130 yards of total offense.
West sophomore quarterback Tavin Irvine was 6 of 25 passing for 27 yards and had six carries for 25 yards.
“We didn’t want to get complacent and compete,” Winklepleck said. “At the end of the day, we were focused on going 1-0 this week. We did that this week, but now we have to get ready to head down to Ankeny (next Friday).
“All you can do is beat the opponent in front of you. We’ve been able to do that so far this season and I think the kids are getting better and better as we go.”
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