Highlanders’ Hills: Rochester Adams tops Stoney Creek 43-18 for district title
ROCHESTER HILLS — Senior quarterback Ryland Watters threw for four touchdowns and ran for another as Rochester Adams dispatched Stoney Creek 43-18 in Friday’s district finals.
“We worked hard for this one. We knew it was a battle, especially last game,” Watters said. “It feels great to be Rochester champions, beating them twice. They’re a great football team, and beating Rochester (High) twice as well is a great feeling.”
Early on, the Cougars’ offense was moving the ball. Stoney Creek took the opening kick off and drove 53 yards in 14 plays before coming up short on fourth-and-goal.
Adams, by comparison, needed only three plays to score. Watters hit Matt Toeppner on a screen pass to the short side, and Toeppner picked up a couple of blocks, racing down the left sideline for a 93-yard touchdown. A 2-point conversion gave Adams an 8-0 lead, and the Highlanders would never trail.
Stoney Creek finished its next drive, a 12-play possession capped by a 13-yard TD pass from Brandon Gergics to Jake Lantzy that made the score 8-6.

But Adams would roll after that. The Highlanders kept hitting big plays, including a 57-yard touchdown from Watters to Cameron Dawood on their next possession that made it 14-6. That was the first of three touchdown catches on the night for Dawood.
“That was the game plan going in,” Adams head coach Tony Patritto said. “They were trying to guess what we were doing and taking some gambles, and we made some good checks and made some really nice plays.”
Adams finished the game with 15 plays going for 10 or more yards. Meanwhile, the longest play for Stoney Creek covered just 14 yards until the Cougars finally hit for several big gains on their final drive. By that time, though, the visitors were down 43-12. Once the Highlanders got dialed in on defense, Stoney Creek’s offense ground to a halt. After running 26 plays on their first two drives and gaining 118 yards, the Cougars generated just one first down on their next six trips.
“We just didn’t make enough plays tonight, and that was the frustrating part for us. We had a couple of good drives early on to put the ball close to the end zone and just couldn’t capitalize on it,” Cougars head coach Rick Powell said.
Photos of Rochester Adams vs. Stoney Creek in a D1 district football championship
With the win, Adams improves to 9-2 and will take a six-game winning streak into next week’s regional matchup against Romeo. The Highlanders and Bulldogs met on opening night with Adams winning 39-7. But after dropping its first two games, Romeo has now won eight of its last nine contests, including a 56-0 destruction of Macomb Dakota on Friday.
“Romeo is just crushing people,” Patritto said. “We’re going to have to be at our very best to beat them. They’ve got to come here, but the first game means nothing. They have us on film, we have them on film, so it’s really just about execution now.” He added that, “High school football is a momentum sport, and it’s really what the kids believe in. Our kids are starting to believe in themselves a little bit more, and I think that’s the difference.”
Stoney Creek finishes 7-4 in Year 2 under Powell.
“We’re just trying to take it one step at a time,” Powell said. “Last year, we made the playoffs and lost to these guys in similar fashion. This year, we challenged our seniors. What were our seniors going to do? What would they make for the program and for the team? And they really stepped up. Our motto and our goal was '1% better,' and if you look at the season overall, as a whole, we got 1% better as a program, and the seniors did it all. They lead the way. They were true to who they were, and I thank them for everything they did."
The Cougars will graduate 24 seniors, but also return many key pieces from this year’s team.














