OLD ORCHARD BEACH – Winthrop/Monmouth rushed for more than 250 yards and defeated Old Orchard Beach 24-6 Friday night in a Western Class D football game.

Senior running back Zach Glazier led the charge with 160 yards and two touchdowns on 16 carries.

Glazier’s 64-yard run in the first quarter gave the Ramblers first-and-goal at the 6. Two plays later, he scored to give Winthrop/Monmouth a 6-0 lead.

“We have three backs that focus mainly on offense,” Glazier said. “We just run teams into the dirt a little bit, and we always have those numbers for the second half.

“We really ran away with it in the second half, and it felt good.”

Jake Weeks also had a big night, finishing with 81 yards on eight carries, including a 49-yard score in the third quarter that gave Winthrop/Monmouth (2-0) a 12-0 lead.

“We sat Weeks last week because he tweaked his ankle, so people really didn’t know about him,” Winthrop/Monmouth Coach Joel Stoneton said. “But he’s another senior that just comes in and makes things happen. He runs hard. He’s explosive, he hits the hole.”

Old Orchard Beach (1-1) failed to take advantage of several early opportunities.

Linebacker Zach Seamans recovered a fumble on the third play of the game giving the Seagulls the ball at the Winthrop 35. But OOB gained only five yards and failed to convert on fourth down.

Midway through the second quarter, a good punt return and a 15-yard penalty against Winthrop/Monmouth gave Old Orchard Beach the ball on the Ramblers’ 12. But the Seagulls lost a fumble on the next play.

“Winthrop’s good and deep, and they played really good D,” Seagulls Coach Dean Plante said. “Our kids battled, but we had chances in the first (half) and didn’t capitalize. We turned them over, pinned them, got the ball back with great field position, and we didn’t do anything with it.

“Had we taken advantage of the field position we gave ourselves, I think it would have been a battle until the end instead of being over halfway throughout the fourth quarter.”

Winthrop’s success on the ground wasn’t automatic. The Ramblers had 21 running plays that went for 2 yards or fewer. But they stuck with it and got enough big plays to wear down the Seagulls.

Winthrop/Monmouth quarterback Jared Hanson (1 of 5 for 7 yards) wasn’t asked to do much, but he recovered his own fumbled handoff and ran it 8 yards for a touchdown to give the Ramblers an 18-0 lead in the third quarter.

Freshman Dylan Creswell got the Seagulls on the board with a 6-yard touchdown late in the game.

The Maine Principals Association approved a football merger between Winthrop and Monmouth in March. Winthrop’s enrollment has dropped in recent years, and Monmouth had not fielded a varsity team since 1977. Now the squad has a robust 58 players; Old Orchard Beach has 34.

“I think we just wore them down,” Stoneton said. “That’s all it was. It wasn’t that we outplayed them so much as that we had numbers.”