Earlham Echo

September 15, 2026

After two weeks of up and down football and two losses, the Cardinals showed put it all together Friday, thumping winless Panorama, 42-7, on the road. Earlham has better athletes than the Panthers, sure, but the Cards’ nearly flawless execution made the difference in this game.

“We fought really hard the last two weeks, but we just made a lot of simple mistakes,” said Blaine Vanderheiden. “We wanted this one real bad, and the linemen did their job really well, and Brady (Reynolds) ran really well. We just did everything we were supposed to do, and the scoreboard shows that.”

Reynolds added, “I think we’ve just been preaching all season to do your job, stay disciplined. Everyone do your job, trust your teammates, fix the simple errors, and we’ll keep winning games like this.”

Earlham is a running team, and everybody knows it. Against the Panthers, the Cards ran the ball 30 times—mostly between the tackles—for an average of 7.1 yards per pop. All of those plays made the Panther defense key on the run game even more, and the Cards eventually caught them napping. Coach Caskey called two pass plays all night, and both resulted in touchdowns. Vanderheiden faked a handoff up the middle, rolled left, and hit Gabe Lockner for a 28-yard TD strike in the first quarter. Early in the 2^nd quarter, the Cards ran the exact same play. This time, Austen Rodgers caught a short pass and rumbled into the end zone for a touchdown, also from 28 yards out.

We don’t know how ‘quarterback rating’ is calculated in high school, but we’re pretty sure Vanderheiden’s mark of 665.2 for this game is pretty good.

“We have a couple underneath routes and running the ball heavy really sets those up,” said Vanderheiden. “Coach Caskey does a great job of that. So the underneath route was guarded (on the first touchdown) and Gabe was wide open. And then the second time, Gabe was guarded and then (Rodgers) was wide open. Austen made a great play and scored.”

The Panthers moved the ball to the Cardinal 3 yard line in the game’s opening possession. After a penalty moved them back 5 yards, Panorama fumbled and Keegan Long recovered for Earlham. While the Panthers didn’t score, their long drive was a bit of a wakeup call for the Cardinal defense.

“I think we were just like, ‘All right, we need to pick up the pace,” said Reynolds. “We started a little flat. That happens from time to time. But we got our team going and everyone started doing their job like we had talked about and everything worked out all right.”

The Panorama offense didn’t generate much after that, until they hit on a long touchdown pass against the Cardinal backups in the 4^th quarter.

The Cards led, 14-0, after the 2 TD passes. Cole Eitel blocked a Panther punt on their next possession and the Cardinals fell on the ball at the Panorama 9. Reynolds ran the ball in for a touchdown on the next play and the Cards led, 21-0. On the Cardinals’ next possession, Lockner dashed 42 yards for the final score of the 1^st half.

A 26-yard run by Reynolds highlighted the opening drive of the 2^nd half, and Cole Eitel capped it with a 4-yard TD plunge on 4^th down. With the Cards leading by 35 points, a running clock was instituted for the rest of the game.

The Panthers were backed up deep in their own end on their next drive. On a 3^rd-down play, Reynolds leaped in front of an intended receiver and intercepted a pass. He bowled over a would-be tackler near the 20-yard line, got some good blocking, and ran into the end zone for the Cardinals’ final score of the game.

“We kind of talked at halftime about where everyone’s going to be,” said Reynolds. “Everyone else did their job. Hayden (Ealy) was behind me taking the guy over the top. So I got to come up and try to make a play and it all worked out. I had good blockers in front of me to lead me into the end zone.”

Reynolds carried the ball 12 times for 105 yards. Cole Eitel did the bulk of the inside running and ended up with 44 yards on 11 carries.

Next up The Cards host the 3-0 Madrid Tigers for the Homecoming game Friday. The Tigers have won their games by an average of 24 points. They are second in Class A with 838 rushing yards.