Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Cathedral’s Josh Forstner hauls in a deep pass during a Section 2, Nine-Player Football Tournament semifinals game against Red Rock Central on Saturday in Lamberton.

LAMBERTON — The New Ulm Cathedral Greyhounds knew Red Rock Central’s Carter Therkilsen would be an impact player Saturday, but they didn’t expect to see that impact just two plays into the game.

After Carter Therkilsen returned a kick to the RRC 47-yard line, he followed with an 11-yard run and then a 42-yard touchdown run to put the Falcons on the board less than a minute into the game.

He carried that early momentum throughout the game as he rushed for 272 yards on 41 carries, leading the Falcons to a 32-0 shutout win in a Section 2, Nine-Player Football Tournament semifinals game.

RRC (9-0) moves on to a rematch with Wabasso (8-1) in the section finals Friday night at 7 p.m. at Lakeview High School. RRC defeated Wabasso 28-14 during the regular season in Week 7 in Wabasso.

Cathedral ends its season 5-5.

Carter Therkilsen added another touchdown run later in the half, while quarterback Ave Stavnes got involved with 16 carries for 126 yards and a TD. Stavnes also completed 5 of 7 passes for 101 yards and two TDs, one to Jake Erickson for 64 yards late in the first quarter and another 13-yarder to Jordan Therkilsen in the fourth.

“We’ve been really good all year as far as setting the tone in the running game,” RRC head coach Isaac Jenniges said. “I thought that our offensive line play again today was very good. Credit to those five or six guys on the line of scrimmage that did the blocking for us. Dominating at the point of attack, which we did today, and worked into the second level to get Carter and Abe and those guys those little quick openings that they could squeeze through and get through.”

The Greyhounds looked to get their star running back Alex Portner the ball early also, but the Falcons had a nose for the football and stopped him for short gains or no gains all game. This prompted Greyhounds head coach Denny Lux to open up the playbook and ask his quarterback Eli Anderson to throw the ball more, which Anderson did a nice job of considering the tough pressure he saw and cornerback play from the Falcons.

Anderson ended up completing 8 of 19 passes for 75 yards while rushing for 47 yards on 11 carries. Josh Forstner caught four of those passes for for 53 yards.

“Any time you can make a team uncomfortable and take away the things that they really like to do, that’s a benefit for you,” Jenniges said. “But what we did a really good job of today, I thought, was containing Portner. He’s kind of been their guy. Forcing them out of their formations they’ve been most comfortable with and just forcing them to do some things that they’re not super used to doing on a regular basis. Credit to Denny for making the adjustments. I thought their passing game was more than adequate today, we just got a couple of big turnovers in situations where they were pushing the ball deep into our territory.”

After Therkilsen’s second-play TD run, RRC chewed some clock with the ground game and finished a long drive with a 6-yard TD run by Therkilsen. After forcing the Greyhounds to punt, the Falcons had a few runs before a play-action pass from Stavnes landed into the waiting hands of Erickson in the middle of the field, who took it in stride into the end zone for a 64-yard TD reception and 18-0 lead with 1:26 left in the first quarter.

The Greyhounds, now throwing the ball more, got a big throw from Anderson on third-and-18 that Forstner hauled in down the sideline on the run for 44 yards to conclude the first quarter. Forstner followed with another catch, while Andrew Stern had one for 6 yards for a first down that got the Greyhounds into the red zone for the first time.

After a negative run by Portner, Anderson completed another pass to Forstner, but he had the ball stripped for a fumble that Marshal Willhite recovered at the RRC 7.

RRC managed to get the ball in the red zone again late in the first half, but the Greyhounds managed to stop them after a third-down catch by Finn Batalden with no RRC timeouts left ended up seeing the clock run out.

Stavnes got into the end zone in the third quarter on a 5-yard run to make it 24-0 and his TD pass to Jordan Therkilsen in the fourth, followed by a 2-point conversion run by Carter Therkilsen, led to the final score.