North Farmington Runs Away From Hazel Park, 39-8

The Raiders used an explosive running attack en route to their first victory of the season, a 39-8 win over the Hazel Park Vikings.

All five of the Raiders’ touchdowns came on the ground, four of which were on runs of 20 yards or more.

“We really do have faith in our running game,” North Farmington head coach Todd Schultz said. “We’ve got some great linemen that execute and some good backs. We rode those guys all night.”

Three of the touchdowns were scored by senior captain Kevin Miller, who plays both running back and linebacker. Miller found the end zone on runs of 20, 65 and 48 yards.

“Kevin missed game one, came back last week, and he’s gotten better every week,” Schultz said. “He’s a kid that we count on to get things done and he delivers.”

Miller’s 65-yard touchdown run was his second of the night and came in the final minute of the first half, putting the Raiders up 23-8 going into the locker room at halftime.

“I was really feeling it there,” Miller said. “We knew that we could score, and we knew that we could run on them, so on that play we just took it to them. Our offensive line did a great job there and the whole game.”

North Farmington’s other two touchdowns came from senior running back Jacquis Woods on runs of 55 yards and 15 yards. Woods is a smaller, more elusive running back compared to Miller, who is more of a big, power runner.

“We’ve got great depth in our backfield with both power and speed,” Miller said. “With that we’re able to rotate guys in.”

With thunderstorms in the area, opening kickoff was postponed until 8:12 p.m., more than an hour later than originally scheduled. With the unexpected delay, Schultz and his coaching staff had to keep the team from getting too anxious.

“At that point, we were telling them to just relax,” Schultz said. “We didn’t want them to get too hyped up for game time before we knew that we were going out. Once that came, they were ready to go and got themselves pretty excited and motived to get the game going.”

After falling in the first two games of the season to Birmingham Seaholm and Birmingham Groves, North Farmington is now looking to get to .500 with a game at Bloomfield Hills Lahser on Friday, Sept. 16 at 7 p.m.

“This was our first win so now we know that we can win, and we’ll have to bring it next week,” Miller said. “We need to try and be the same team we were this week.”

Hazel Park now has a 1-2 record as well, with North Farmington handing the Vikings their second straight loss. They play at home for the first time since the opening weekend of the season on Friday, Sept. 16 at 7 p.m. with Birmingham Groves visiting.

Correction: The grade and touchdown runs for Jacquis Woods were incorrectly reported in the original version of this story.

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