Rohrbach roars

Toward the end of the third quarter of Columbian's home opener, Mother Nature made her presence known.

Up to that point, it was Tornado quarterback Mike Rohrbach making his presence known.

Lightning caused a premature end to the Tornadoes game against Fostoria with 2:39 left in the third quarter.

By then, Rohrbach, a first-year starter, was already pulled from the game after a breakout performance.

The TC senior, in only his third varsity start, went 12-for-19 passing for 201 yards and four touchdowns in a 47-0 Tornado victory.

"Coach told me after the Mansfield game that we'll be passing a lot more this week to get our passing game installed," Rohrbach said. "It felt good. I was looking forward to a night like this."

Columbian coach Brian Colatruglio learned something during the first two weeks of the season. His team is really good at running the ball. So coming into Week 3, he wanted to see how well the team could do taking to the air.

"As well as we run the ball, we maybe haven't gotten as many reps (passing), especially in game situations," Colatruglio said. "We definitely wanted to come out and see what we could do in the passing game and try to make some plays. We got to get better at that, it's not going to take teams long to figure out that Ryan (Lynch) and Jack (Jacoby) are going to get the ball."

What Colatruglio saw was a pass-catch combination between Rohrbach and Jordan Dye that was very effective, connecting for three scores on the night.

Both credit the friendship they have with the other as the secret behind their connection.

"Me and Jordan have been friends since he moved here from Ada his freshman year," Rohrbach said. "Freshman year, it was our hookup, now that we play on the same level, it's our hookup again."

"He stepped up; he really stepped up," Dye said of his quarterback and friend. "First two games, no one could really stop our run so why pass it when they can't stop it? Coach said coming into the game, we need to work on our pass game and we stepped up and made big plays.

"Freshman year, I think we combined for 13 touchdowns, so I feel like I'm almost his go-to-guy. He's stepping up, especially being a first-year starter, making some big throws."

Dye's first three catches of the night all went for touchdowns. He caught two more passes, totaling 117 yards for the game.

Colatruglio was pleased with the play of his entire receiving core. Vince Anway added five catches for 52 yards, and Donovan Walker had three grabs for 33 yards and a touchdown.

"Jordan's our veteran guy; he's the guy that's played the most out of all our receivers," Colatruglio said. "It's good to see him really make some plays tonight. Donovan too. Donovan, it's good to see him out here. He didn't get the ball a ton in the passing game the first two weeks, so it's good to see him make some plays too."

"For us, we got some young guys in some situations, we have some guys missing," Fostoria coach Jim Kelly said. "Not an excuse, but we have some guys missing, we had to put some guys in some spots, and they're learning on the fly."

While Columbian was moving the ball up and down the field, Fostoria was mostly standing still.

Or going backwards.

At halftime, Columbian racked up 306 yards of offense while Fostoria was at minus-17.

The Redmen had three first downs in the first half, all coming off Columbian penalties.

After holding Fostoria to a three-and-out on the game's first series, Columbian needed four plays to find the end zone. Rohrbach and Dye connected for the first time on the night from 39 yards out to start the scoring.

Jace Hurt intercepted an Adonis Cousin pass on Fostoria's next series, which was followed by a three-play Tornado scoring drive, with the payoff once again coming from a Rohrbach-to-Dye connection, this time from 32 yards out.

Jacoby tacked on a 19-yard touchdown run upping the score to 20-0 after one quarter.

Rohrbach found Dye one more time in the second quarter and hit Walker for another score to make it 33-0 at halftime.

"They're a good team and extremely well-coached, one of the better-coached around," Kelly said. "We knew that would be a very difficult task for us."

The second half was more of the same.

Hurt rushed in a score from a yard out to open the half. Seventeen seconds later, defensive lineman Alec Lucius scooped up a fumble and rumbled 7 yards to the end zone for a score.

"I feel so good for Alec Lucius," Colatruglio said. "There's a kid, he may be the hardest worker I ever coached in the weight room. He is just a monster in the weight room and has done everything for three years that we've asked. So to reward a kid like that with a touchdown is pretty awesome."

By that time the score was 47-0. Columbian had 360 yards of offense to Fostoria's minus-22.

Two series later, lightning hit and the game was soon called.

TC's focus on the passing game turned out to be a success. After being told he would be the focal point of the game plan, Rohrbach admitted to some early nerves.

"I was a little nervous to start ... There were some butterflies; it's my first year starting," he said. "But after [my first pass] I calmed down a lot."

Dye meanwhile was excited at the chance to show what he could do in the home opener of his senior season.

"Excited. Definitely excited," he said. "Knowing that we get a chance to make plays, first home game too.

"Very nice way to start it, 47-0."