The Gold-Burg Bears whooped up on Lueders-Avoca in their bi-district playoff win on Friday night in Woodson.
The Bears won by mercy rule early in the third quarter 59-14 as they beat up on a Raiders team like they did every team during district play.
Lueders-Avoca got the ball first and looked like it was mostly trying to drop back to pass and let Jacob Gaspar make plays with either his feet or arm. Gold-Burg sent rushers Kolton Whitaker and Aidan Foster to rush him, working in tandem to prevent him from breaking contain and hurry up his decision making.
The first drive the Raiders tried to throw it deep and Jayton Epperson intercepted the pass near his own goal line. Gold-Burg’s first drive saw the team go methodically down the field with runs from the Grace brothers. Epperson capped off the drive though with a 27-yard touchdown pass to Whitaker to go up 6-0.
The Bears defense forced the game’s first turnover on downs on Lueders-Avoca next drive. On the first play of Gold-Burg’s drive, it was the Grace brothers who found each other. Kani Grace threw a check down pass to Jayon Grace after scrambling a bit. Jayon then went the rest of the way to complete the 53-yard touchdown pass and put the team up 14-0.
The Raiders answered on their next drive as a 35-yard pass to the end zone was caught for a touchdown to cut the lead to 14-8. Still, Lueders-Avoca had no answer for the Bears offense.
The team quickly drove down the field and the drive ended with Kani scoring on a short run to put Gold-Burg back up by two scores 22-8.
There was a wild sequence next. Foster recovered a bobbled snap from the Raiders that put the ball near Lueders-Avoca’s goal line. The next play the Bears fumbled the ball right back to the Raiders while trying to fight for extra yards.
The very next play though an errant snap went over the head of Lueders-Avoca’s quarterback. Whitaker recovered the ball in the end zone for a touchdown to put Gold-Burg up 30-8 heading into the second quarter.
The Raiders next three drives went nowhere as the Bears forced turnovers on downs. The Gold-Burg offense took over with a short field each time. Epperson threw two touchdown passes to Jayon and Kani before Jayon scored on a 20-yard run.
The Bears were up 52-8 and were one point away from having to avoid coming out for the second half due to the mercy rule if they could score once more with 1:50 left to play.
Instead the Raiders drove down the field despite several players going out with injuries as the game went on. Lueders-Avoca was taking up valuable time, but also the Raiders ended up scoring on a short pass for a touchdown to make the score 52-14 right before halftime.
Gold-Burg did have to come out for the second half, but did not take long to end things.
The Bears got the ball to start the third quarter and a little more than a minute passed before Kani got loose and scored on a 55-yard touchdown run.
The converted extra point gave Gold-Burg the final margin to end the game early with the final score 59-14.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.