Fans at the Hinsdale Central-Lyons Township football game had their hands full braving the downpour that soaked the stadium Friday night in Western Springs.

The Red Devils matched the day-long storm’s intensity with their own version of a flood offensively, scoring on two runs of 50-plus yards and returning a blocked punt for a score. The end result was a 33-7 win for the visiting archrivals in each team’s West Suburban Silver opener.

The win gives the Red Devils (2-1, 1-0) an early leg up in the conference standings and also gives them a win against the defending conference champion in LT (0-3, 0-1), whose only loss in the regular season last year was to Hinsdale Central.

“I told the guys that this was a defining moment for our football team,” Hinsdale Central coach Mike DiMatteo said. “That is a quality program and they’re defending champs. I told our guys we were either going to be a first-half team or we are going to finish, and tonight we finished.”

The game didn’t start out in Hinsdale Central’s favor as the Lions scored on a 58-yard run from Ryan Mitchell on their third play from scrimmage.

However, the Red Devils answered immediately as Rich Zajeski ran 80 yards on their next drive’s first play to pull the team even. Zajeski scored three times in the game, including a 19-yard pass reception from John Whitelaw in the third quarter to put the game out of reach at 27-7 with 4:54 to go in the third and a 54-yard run to cap the scoring in the fourth.

“One of the things we talk about with our guys is resiliency and we feel with our guys we can break out at any time,” DiMatteo said. “This is a big rivalry game for us and right after they scored, I told our guys, ‘Do your thing,’ and we did. They threw us off a bit, but we adjusted and did a nice job.”

As good as Hinsdale Central played, the Lions continually shot themselves in the foot. On top of having a punt blocked, the Lions lost a fumble and had trouble with the center-quarterback exchange, having miscues on at least a dozen different occasions.

The Red Devils also hit LT for 11 plays of negative yardage and 11 plays of zero yardage.