AMBOY – From the opening kickoff until the final horn of the first round Illinois 8-Man Football Association playoff game against No. 13-seeded West Central on Saturday, Nov. 2 at The Harbor, the Amboy-LaMoille-Ohio football team was in control.

The No. 4 Clippers advanced to the second round with a shutout, 54-0 victory.

“It felt pretty good to have my number called. We’ve been working all year to make it to this point,” said senior running back Josh McKendry. “We’ve been working hard this week. We’ve been practicing hard. Coach has been getting on us about mistakes. I think that is what helped us pull away early in the game.

“We have a bunch of athletes on this team that can do whatever they want on the field, basically. It’s pretty fun to have a bunch of guys who can run the ball. With us all being seniors, it has made us closer. We’ve been playing together for so long; I think since the third grade. I wouldn’t want to play with a different group of guys.”

McKendry scored three touchdowns including the first two end zone trips of the game on carries of 22 yards (9:32 1Q) and 12 yards (5:45 1Q). His third score was a 7-yard burst in the second quarter. His three touchdowns came on 48 yards on five carries.

Senior Brayden Klein took in a 6-yard score with 3:23 left in the first quarter to take a 22-0 lead and sophomore Caiden Heath trucked in a 2-yard TD at 11:56 in the second frame for a 30-0 lead.

“We came out firing off of the ball against West Central. We’ve been struggling a little bit. At the beginning of the year, not everyone was doing what they needed to do,” said sophomore Trevor Stenzel, who plays on both the offensive and defensive line. “But we’ve came together and the last few weeks we’ve played better. We looked sharp (Saturday). It’s awesome when we can keep them scoreless. If they score, they can get happy or fired up. It’s hard to do that with no points on the board.

“I am friends with everyone who was on the team last year. As this season has went on, we’ve all gotten really close. It’s been good bonding. Playing football with friends, it doesn’t get better than that.”

Eddie Jones, the senior quarterback, threw two passes in the game (67 yards) including a 48-yard scoring strike to junior Rylan McNinch with 8:26 in the second.

After McKendry scored his third touchdown to give the Clippers a 46-0 halftime lead to inject a running clock in the second half, senior Tyler Huggins finished the games scoring with 9 minutes remaining on a 2-yard run.

“Our offensive line did a good job (Saturday) coming out, getting off of the ball, and opening up holes for our backs,” Clippers coach Scott Payne said. “Josh McKendry did a good job of running the football. He had three touchdowns and helped set up the play-action pass in the first half.

“Josh, Ed Fry, and Brayden Klein all did a great job of running the ball. Quinn didn’t get hurt, but we pulled him early in the game in a cautionary type of thing because we were already up big and didn’t want to risk an injury.

“It all comes down to our offensive line and they did a tremendous job against West Central.”

Besides holding the Heat scoreless, the Clippers recovered four fumbles during the contest.

Payne said his defensive unit controlled the line of scrimmage and didn’t let much get into the secondary.

Amboy is now in the I8FA quarterfinals against No. 5 Martinsville at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9 at home.

Martinsville won its first-round matchup against Milford-Cissna Park, 52-22 behind quarterback Kaiden Simons, wide receiver Gavin Leloup, and running back Adam Parcel, who ran for over 200 yards and scored three touchdowns.