CINCINNATI — For seven weeks, Anderson and Winton Woods had been on a collision course for a Week 9 showdown to decide the Eastern Cincinnati Conference, and on Friday night Anderson finished the argument, turning a one-possession game at halftime into a 47-21 victory and its third straight ECC championship.
Both teams had lost their season openers, then ran through the rest of the conference for nearly two months before meeting along Forest Road. The two playoff-bound programs went blow for blow for nearly 30 minutes, with Anderson holding a 20-14 lead at the break, before the Raptors’ high-flying offense put the game away in the second half.
Quarterback Owen Scalf threw six touchdown passes — three each to seniors Cooper Kathman and Tysin Weaver. Weaver finished with a career-high four receiving touchdowns, one of them a 55-yard score in the first quarter on a trick play thrown by running back Jordan Davis, and he crossed the 1,000-yard receiving mark for the second consecutive season.
The win was Anderson’s fourth straight over Winton Woods dating to 2022, and it extended the Raptors’ conference winning streak to 32 consecutive games — a run that now includes three straight outright ECC crowns.
For Winton Woods, which came in 7-1, the loss ends its bid to break Anderson’s hold on the league, but the Warriors remain playoff-bound and will learn their postseason path when the regular season closes next week.
Anderson, meanwhile, has clinched at least a top-eight seed in Division II, Region 8 and moved into first place in the region, in position for a first-round bye. The Raptors’ offense, which has now hung 47 points on the best defense left on its schedule, enters Week 10 as the team nobody in Region 8 wants to draw.
The regular season closes next Friday, and Anderson’s assignment is a chance at a clean sweep: the Raptors host Loveland (2-7) in Week 10, trying to run the table against ECC opponents for a third consecutive year before the playoffs begin.
If Friday night was the test of whether Anderson’s streak was a scheduling accident or a standard, the Raptors answered it the way they have answered every conference test for three years — with points, in bunches, when the game was still in doubt.
