ROGERS — It didn’t take long for Bentonville to get its offense back on track.

The fourth-ranked Tigers overpowered upstart Rogers Heritage for 508 yards of offense and sent the 10thranked War Eagles tumbling with their first loss, a 56-27 mercy rule in front of a large homecoming crowd at Tiger Stadium.

Courtney Haskell ran for five touchdowns and rushed for a season-high 225 yards on 17 carries. Shane Boedeker added a season-high 158 yards on 27 carries and another two scores of his own.

The two only got 16 combined carries for 66 yards last week in a 31-21 loss at Fort Smith Southside.

Friday against Heritage (5-1, 2-1 7A-West) the two backs had 25 combined at the half.

The Tigers (5-1, 2-1 7AWest) rushed for 418 yards on 53 carries as a team Friday.

“I guess all of us felt bad about last week’s performance,” Bentonville coach Barry Lunney said. “We were just going to make a point to say we’re going to run it and get it established again.” After Bentonville allowed an 80-yard touchdown pass to Grant Driver on a tipped pass on the first offensive play of the game, the Tigers went to work on the ground and rushed 16 times for 176 yards in the first quarter.

Haskell scored from 7 yards out to give the Tigers a 7-6 lead midway through the first. Then, after an Arthur Flowers interception, Boedeker carried for 16 yards and then scored on a 1-yard plunge to make it 14-6.

Bentonville forced Heritage to punt and took over at its own 45. Haskell took a sweep around the left side for 55 yards on the very next play for a 21-6 score.

Tigers quarterback Pearson Gean completed a 6-yard pass to Hayden Boydston for a 28-6 Bentonville lead after the first quarter.

“They’re just a big, strong football team,” said Heritage head coach Perry Escalante, whose defense had only given up 50 points all season.

“They lined up and whipped us and made us like it. That’s just good old-fashioned football right there.” Haskell got loose for a56-yard run in the second quarter and would score once again before half and add another TD run in the third quarter. Boedeker scored on a 2-yard run to open the fourth quarter and inflict the mercy rule.

“(Haskell is) just really fast and when he gets to the outside there’s no way they’re going to stop him.

He’s gone,” said Boedeker, who made his first start of the season at running back.

Bentonville quarterbacks completed all six of their passes thrown, including Gean who went 4 for 4 for 70 yards.

But when you average nearly 8 yards per rush, there’s not a big emphasis on passing the ball. In fact of Bentonville’s 53 rushes, 17 were for more than 10 yards.

Haskell gave credit to the Tigers’ big offensive line.

“They were amazing,” he said, “They were openingup holes left to right.” The Tigers gave up 370 yards defensively, including 283 by the War Eagles passing game. Bentonville junior Dakota Baggett tried to intercept the first pass thrown to Driver and tippedit right to him and Driver went up the visitor sideline for the score.

War Eagles running back Zac Stewart scored the other three touchdowns for Heritage.

Stewart caught TD passes of 5 and 12 yards in the first half and scored on a 23-yard run in the fourth. He finished with 83 yards rushing on 15 carries. Driver had127 yards receiving on five catches.

Brown played well, going 19 of 31 for all of Heritage’s passing yards.

Sports, Pages 10 on 10/14/2009

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