Friday's prep football: Surging River Rouge rolls past New Boston Huron

New Boston — Here’s some bad news for the rest of the teams left in the Division 3 state football playoffs.

Beware and get ready, because the defending state champion River Rouge are peaking and look utterly capable of defending the title.

Rouge (7-1) definitely looked ready for the bigger games ahead Friday with a convincing 40-21 victory over fellow Downriver heavyweight New Boston Huron in the district championship game.

“You have to be (peaking), especially in a shortened season, you have no other choice,” said Rouge coach Corey Parker. “You couldn’t come into this short season and turn around and not play well at the end.”

River Rouge scored on the first play of the game when Davion Haynes went 80 yards with the opening kickoff for a touchdown.

More:Michigan high school football scoreboard: District finals

And from there, Rouge never really slowed down.

Quarterback Mareyohn Hrabowski, who is a Western Michigan-commit, scored on runs of 3, 7 and 3 yards — all in the first half — and threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Nicholas Marsh, as River Rouge took a 34-7 lead into halftime.

“With the playoffs here, we’re coming on a lot stronger and playing better and more efficiently,” Hrabowski said. “When the game starts, we had struggled to score points early this season. We scored points tonight and that got us into good position.”

River Rouge, said Hrabowski, has been talking about repeating as state champions.

“It would be awesome because it is something our school has never done, gone back to back,”  Hrabowski said. “That would be the best thing.”

Parker felt simply scoring points and putting pressure on Huron was going to be a key.

“The key was really just playing in space, and it’s cold, so score some points and put them in a situation where they become one-dimensional and just continue to work,” Parker said. “We have some young guys playing right now, and you can see their growth and development.”

Backs Charles Daniels and Tayshaun Massey had big runs to set up River Rouge's explosive offense.

River Rouge outscored opponents 279-63 this season and has five shutouts.

Huron (7-2) got on the scoreboard in the first half when quarterback Chase Molnar found Griffin Cholette with an 11-yard pass, then added a 70-yard scoring pass to Isaac Smith and a 3-yard TD run from Tycen Stevens to end the game.

“They’re the defending state champs, we were just outmanned,” Huron coach Chad Smith said. “We played hard to the end. I’m proud of our kids. At the end of the day, they’re a better team and it wasn’t like we gave them the game. They’re the better team.”

More district playoffs

Warren Michigan Collegiate 52, Detroit Edison 0: Deion Black had eight carries for 150 yards and three touchdowns and went 2-for-2 passing for 58 yards and two touchdowns, Cameron Roetherford had seven tackles and three sacks, Tre Redding had two interceptions and Jamar Willis added an interception return for a touchdown for Collegiate (9-0). Edison finished 6-3.

ted.kulfan@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @tkulfan; Detroit News staff contributed