Published: October 16, 2009 11:13 pm      

Memorial able to trip up Raiders

ELKHART, Ind — One thing Northridge High School football coach Jonathan Kirkton wants his Raider team to do is forget about Friday night’s game with the Elkhart Memorial Crimson Chargers.

Memorial senior Zach Corpe scored three touchdowns and passed for another as the Chargers defeated Northridge, 42-14, in a Northern Lakes Conference contest at Memorial.

The Northridge-Memorial result helped created a five –way tie for second place in the NLC standings. Concord, Northridge, NorthWood, Memorial and Warsaw all tied with 4-3 records.

“We have to wipe the slate clean. We can’t carry any of this over to next week,” Kirkton said.

The coach was referring to the start of the state tournament next Friday as Northridge (5-4, 4-3 NLC) travels to Angola and Memorial (4-3, 3-3) is at Michigan City.

Northridge over the two previous weeks had defeated Goshen 40-34 in triple overtime and Concord 24-23.

“I think our kids have gotten over the Concord win,” Kirkton said. “We had talked this week about raising our play to the next level. Memorial did that and we didn’t.

“This is disappointing. Even when we got dominated by East Noble we fought back in the second half. Tonight we didn’t. We turned the ball over too many times in the second half.”

Northridge lost two fumbles and had two passes intercepted in the second half.

Corpe carried the ball 18 times for 144 yards while junior Tyran Hansborough added 71 on 10 rushes.

Corpe scored on runs of 1 and 26 yards and caught a scoring pass of 8 yards from junior quarterback Dustin Mills. Corpe also tossed a 20-yard TD pass to senior Josh Peek.

“Those two running backs (Corpe and Hansborough) hurt us,” Kirkton said. “How many yards did they gain after we hit them.”

The Raiders had their best drive on the game’s opening possession. Northridge marched 65 yards in 16 plays with senior Dylan Meyer covering the last 5 for the TD at 6:10 of the first period. Senior Collin Ouimet booted the PAT.

Memorial answered the Raider drive with a 77-yard one of its own. Hansborough scored on a 19-yard scamper and senior Tyler Keck added the PAT at 2:58.

Memorial went on to a 14-7 halftime lead and went up 28-7 midway through the third quarter.