Archbishop Thomas Murphy football coach Terry Ennis isn’t reading too much into the Wildcats’ easy dispatching of Evergreen last week.

The Wildcats scored seven unanswered touchdowns en route to a 46-7 rout over the Wolverines Sept. 6 at Archbishop Murphy High School.

Part of the reason for Archbishop Murphy’s dominance was due to experience. The Wildcats lost only a handful of players from last year’s Class 1A state champions, while Evergreen was still getting used to first-year coach Paul Maui.

“I think we had quite a few kids returning,” Ennis said. “That really worked to our advantage in an early setting. We did a nice job of executing the offense.”

Indeed.

Four different players scored touchdowns and the Archbishop Murphy ground game had a short field to work most of the afternoon due to turnovers.

“We were much better balanced than we were … a year ago,” Ennis said.

The Wildcats took a 19-0 lead in the first quarter on a 35-yard touchdown run by junior quarterback Kyle Wilkins and touchdown runs of 18 and 2 yards by running backs Doug VanderWel and Ben Waiss, respectively.

Then it was Stan Smith’s turn to shine. The sophomore running back ran for touchdowns of 76 and 20 yards in the second quarter.

Waiss added a 14-yard touchdown run and teammate Jevon Butler scored on a 1-run run in the third quarter.

“As far as a first game, it was a very good start for us,” Ennis said.

Evergreen avoided a shutout when Jeremy Bakker connected on a 11-yard pass to Courtlee Harris in the fourth quarter.

Ennis also was happy with how the Wildcat defense played.

“We had put a priority on being a better tackling team for week one,” he said. “That was a marked area of improvement from a year ago at this time.”