Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Springfield’s Kadyn Anderson (10) is greeted by his quarterback Parker Kuehn (12) after the two connected on a touchdown pass in the first quarter of Friday night’s South District, West-South District football game against the Wabasso Rabbits in Wabasso.

WABASSO — Underestimating opponents isn’t something a state-ranked football team does.

The No. 2-ranked Class A Springfield Tigers demonstrated that in a big way against the Wabasso Rabbits on Friday night, putting up seven consecutive touchdowns on the way to a 48-7 win in a South District, West-South Subdistrict football game.

Despite losing to Sleepy Eye United at Sleepy Eye High School last week, the now 1-3 Rabbits made SEU sweat more than once and came up just short 24-19. Springfield was calm, cool and collected on Friday, however, as it rolled to 4-0 on the year with the blowout win.

“I think our kids and our community know how good of a coach Joe Kemp is [at Wabasso] and the program that he’s had over the years there,” Springfield head coach Adam Meyer said. “As far as our team goes, our kids are really focused on what we can do to keep improving each and every week and that’s really been our focus here, especially early in the season. It’s about us and what we can do and what we can control as opposed to focusing on who we’re playing quite as much as it would be later in the year.”

Tigers quarterback Parker Kuehn was 14 of 25 for 188 yards and five touchdowns, four of them going to Isaac Fredin, who finished with seven catches for 94 yards. Kadyn Anderson also had three catches for 42 yards and a score.

Gavin Vanderwerf led the Tigers on the ground with 123 yards and two touchdowns, while Adiel Trevino rushed for 64 yards. Vanderwerf also led the Tigers on defense with six tackles, while Fredin, Anderson and Tyson Horkey each had an interception.

Rabbits quarterback Drew Kemp completed 7 of 15 passes for 62 yards and three interceptions for Wabasso. Calvin Hanna had three receptions for 28 yards, while Sam Zeug had two catches for 20 yards and eight carries for 36 yards and a TD.

Zeke Olson led the Rabbits on defense with seven tackles.

The Tigers had 443 yards of offense to the Rabbits’ 143 yards.

After a three-and-out started the game for Wabasso, the Tigers took over from their own 36 and ran an accelerated offense down the field that gave Wabasso little time to react. Ten plays later, the Tigers were in the end zone with 6:43 left in the first after Kuehn threw to Fredin in the end zone for a 15-yard TD. A 2-point conversion catch by Brayden Sturm made it 8-0.

The Tigers’ defense continued to make plays on the Rabbits’ second drive of the night as Horkey intercepted a Kemp pass and took it to the Wabasso 29. Kuehn needed just one throw to put the Tigers up two touchdowns as his 29-yard pass found Kadyn Anderson. Another 2-point conversion catch by Sturm made it 16-0 Tigers with 4:46 left in the opening quarter.

Things got worse for Wabasso in a hurry on the ensuing kickoff as Colton Sell forced a fumble that was recovered by Dane Fast to give the Tigers the ball back at the Wabasso 28. Moments later, Fredin was left wide open at the goal line as he caught a pass and backed into the end zone for a 16-yard TD and 22-0 lead with 3:11 left in the first.

The Tigers forced another Wabasso punt late in the quarter and turned that into another 6 points as Vanderwerf scored on a 21-yard run with 10:09 left in the second quarter. An interception by Fredin on the first play of Wabasso’s next drive ended up leading to a fifth consecutive touchdown drive for Springfield as it went up 36-0 after Fredin’s third TD catch of the night, a 19-yarder, and a 2-point conversion keeper by Kuehn.

The Tigers’ quest for six consecutive touchdown drives stalled out late in the second quarter as the Rabbits forced a turnover on downs after back-to-back incompletions. The Rabbits got their biggest play of the half moments later, a catch and run of 17 yards by Zeug, but the Tigers’ defense came through again before the half as Anderson intercepted a long pass on the sideline to help preserve Springfield’s 36-0 lead at the half.

“Much of our credit goes to our defensive coaching staff, coach [Brandon] Wilhelmi, [Cliff] Heglund and coach [Matt] Vogel do a great job getting our kids ready,” Meyer said. “And then I’ve just been really impressed with the ability of our defensive players to carry out the game plan and execute at a high level. We’ve been fortunate to where we’ve been able to stop the run early this season and that puts teams in predictable situations and we’ve been able to get our hands on some footballs in the secondary.”

Vanderwerf put the Tigers up 42-0 early in the second half after he broke several tackles on the way to a 49-yard TD run, while Fredin snagged his fourth TD catch of the night with 1:57 left in the third for a 48-0 lead.

With running time in the fourth, the Rabbits finally broke into the scoring column after Zeug powered into the end zone on a 3-yard TD run. The extra point was good off the leg of Tavyn Larson.

Wabasso travels next Friday to take on Martin County West, while Springfield hosts SEU on Friday.