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BRUSSELS, Belgium – Already scheduled for a bye this weekend, the Bitburg Barons earned themselves an extra quarter of rest Saturday by pinning a 41-0 courtesy-rule defeat on the International School of Brussels Raiders.The victory came when ISB coach Will Vreugdenhil chose not to play on when the score reached 41-0 near the end of the third quarter. It clinched the regular-season Division II-North crown for the unbeaten two-time defending European D-II champion Barons. It was a school-record 19th straight victory for Bitburg (5-0 overall, 4-0 in II-North), the sixth-longest winning streak in DODDS-Europe football history.All-Europe running back Kyle Edgar led a share-the-wealth Bitburg attack which put five different players into the ISB end zone on Saturday.Edgar, who carried 18 times for 164 yards, scored two touchdowns; Austin Schmidt (eight carries for 47 yards), Corey Bashon (six rushes for 28 yards), Matt Flood (5 rushes for 23 yards) and Shaquille Williams (three carries for 11 yards) each scored a Bitburg touchdown.Newcomer Bryce Randall, with 13 tackles, and Schmidt, with eight stops, led a Bitburg defense which held ISB’s Matias Bifani to 34 yards on 14 carries and his teammate Vinny Culotta to just 20 yards in eight tries.“Very simply,” Vreugdenhil emailed on Saturday, “Bitburg came to play.”The Barons, whose two-plus-season long winning steak trails the 31- and 28-game streaks posted by Ansbach between 2006 and 2009 and 2002-2005, respectively, is scheduled for a bye week on Saturday. The Barons will then host the No. 4 finisher in II-South in the European D-II quarterfinals on Oct. 22.A victory in that game would allow Bitburg to tie defunct Frankfurt’s 20-game winning streak, forged from 1971-74, for fifth place on the all-time DODDS-Europe list. Ramstein’s 26-game run from 1994-96 and SHAPE’s 24 straight from 1982-85 are third and fourth on the list.ISB (2-1 in league play), which got 10 tackles and a fumble recovery from Bifani and 10 tackles from Culotta, is scheduled to close its regular season Friday night at Baumholder in a game which well could decide which of those teams will be the other II-North host in the Oct. 22 European quarterfinals.

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