Cougars/Panthers Set for Key Northwoods Match Up

Cougars Eat Up
Eagles on the Ground
for Blowout Win
Coleman had its highest scoring game of the season on Friday, putting up 40 points in the first quarter alone on the way to a 64-6 rout of Northland Pines.
The Cougars scored five touchdowns and completed every two-point conversion in the first quarter. They had touchdown runs of 50, 46, 39, and 36 yards in addition to an 80-yard interception return touchdown from Micah Kuchta.
Those four rushing touchdowns would account for more than half of the team’s offensive yards in the game. The team spread the ball around, with no player carrying more than seven times.
Owen Kinziger ran twice for 85 yards and two touchdowns, Peter Kuchta ran twice for 59 yards and a touchdown, Will Bieber ran twice for 67 yards and a score, Brady Gross ran three times for 22 yards and a touchdown, and Braxton Darga took three carries for 10 yards and a touchdown. Gavin Fochesato and Garrett Kriescher each scored fourth-quarter rushing touchdowns.
Coleman coach Jeff Bronson said it was the first time this season his team has been getting close to 100 percent healthy, with returning senior lineman Hunter Shevy providing a big boost.
“That is going to make us better up front on both sides of the ball, and then the guys that started the year hurt are almost 100 percent,” Bronson said.
Senior quarterback Trent Mongin did not play Friday due to an injury, with Micah Kuchta filling in well. He did not throw a pass, but he got a few players to jump offsides and managed the game confidently.
“He does a very good job for a young quarterback changing counts,” Bronson said. “He did all week at practice. In fact, he actually got some of the starting linemen to jump offsides, which was the frustrating part.”
Next week figures to be a tougher test for the undefeated Cougars, as they travel to Oconto Falls on Friday. The Panthers are 4-2, including a forfeit victory.
High Powered Eagles
Sink Marines 34-6
The Marinette Marines’ losing streak extended to four with a 34-6 loss to Southern Door on Friday, but coach Nate Anderson struck an optimistic tone after the game.
The Eagles are 5-0 on the season following the win, and have allowed just 24 points so far while scoring 155. They sit atop the Packerland standings.
They went for 398 yards while holding Marinette to 123 on Friday. They led 28-0 at halftime before a 59-yard touchdown run in the third by Zack Lynch. Marinette’s Landon Corwin scored a one-yard touchdown for Marinette later in the period, and it ended 34-6.
Lynch ran 18 times for 269 yards and four touchdowns, but Marinette had success shutting down the rest of the Eagle offense.
Southern Door quarterback Drew Daoust was 8-17 passing for 90 yards, and the rest of the team’s runners ran 17 times for 39 yards.
“We played the best we’ve played all year. We were just focused on ourselves, not the score, not the outcome,” Anderson said. “We’ve had so many different blown coverages and so many different things, the talk going into this game and what we wanted to focus on was getting better for down the road, because we’ve got some winnable games at the end of our schedule, and getting our kids to be in a position where they can at least make a play, and we had that opportunity tonight. There was no blown coverage, no wide open guys.”
Marinette’s Ethan Doubek and Lyric Anthony combined to throw for 64 yards on 6-11 passing. Nick Baldwin caught two passes for 40 yards and Dominck Welch led the team with 19 yards rushing on seven attempts.
“We knew it was going to be an uphill climb with these guys,” Anderson said of Southern Door. “They’ve got the best linebacker I’ve seen in my 15 years of coaching high school football. He’s going to be a D1 kid. He’s a stud and can make every tackle on the field.”
That linebacker Anderson is talking about is reigning Packerland Defensive Player of the Year Taylor Schaefer. He had 12 total tackles against the Marines.
Next up for Marinette (1-4) is Bonduel. The Bears are 2-3 on the season. Then it’s an 0-5 Peshtigo team, Oconto (3-2), and Mishicot (3-2).
“We’ve just got to play better football, assignment-sure, follow our rules, and give ourselves a chance to make plays,” Anderson said. “I think we did that tonight, and we’ll start making those plays as we finish out the year.”
Panthers Beat Hatchets
in Overtime 20-17
The Oconto Falls defense stood firm and Carter Hill scored an overtime touchdown to give the Panthers a 20-17 win on Friday night.
The two teams went into overtime tied at 14. Tomahawk got the ball first but made no offensive progress, instead settling for an impressive 39-yard field goal from William Tombs.
That meant a touchdown would win it for the Panthers, and Hill did just that, scoring his third touchdown of the game on a six-yard race to the end zone.
Tomahawk led the game at halftime, 7-0, but Oconto Falls looked strong in the second half. Hill scored in the third quarter and Alex Haines punched in the two-point conversion for an 8-7 lead.
In the fourth, Hill scored his second touchdown of the day. The Panthers went for two, which would have made it a two-score game and all but sealed the win, but Tomahawk shut it down, giving Mason Evans the opportunity to tie it late, 14-14, with a 12-yard touchdown.
Haines ran 30 times for 144 yards for Oconto Falls and Evans carried 26 times for 136 yards for the Hatchets.
Neither team had a passing completion, and they combined for just 409 yards of offense.
Hill ran 13 times for 47 yards and three touchdowns.
Cole Bozile led the Panther defense with 11 total tackles. Jackson Burd had a sack.
Next up for the Panthers (4-2) is the undefeated Coleman Cougars. The Oconto Falls players that were on last year’s team will be out for revenge, as it was the Cougars who interrupted a 5-0 Panther season in week six of last season.
Friday’s game takes place in Oconto Falls at 7 p.m.
Menominee’s Big
Offensive Night
Carries Them
Past Escanaba
The Menominee Maroons came alive on both sides of the ball in a 48-28 win over Escanaba on Friday.
Landan Bardowski ran for 187 yards and three touchdowns on 25 carries, and Kaeden Calcari took six carries for 152 yards and one touchdown.
Trevor Theuerkauf threw 15 times, completing nine for 134 yards and two touchdowns. Calcari caught one of the touchdowns for 12 yards and Bardowski caught five passes for 74 yards and a score.
Defensively, Kaiden Bell had a 14-yard interception return touchdown. Menominee also recovered three fumbles, which offset 356 yards of offense for Escanaba.
Escanaba’s Casey Bray was 16-24 for 205 yards passing, two touchdowns and one interception. Ben Johnson ran 16 times for 95 yards and a touchdown.
Next up for Menominee (2-2) is a non-league game against Milwaukee Academy of Science (3-1).
Clippers Big Second
Half is Too Much
for Bulldogs
Peshtigo scored its season-high in points but came up short against Sturgeon Bay on Friday night, 40-14.
The Bulldogs had scored 16 points through four games coming into Friday’s game, but they found some success against the Clipper defense.
With Peshtigo down 13-0 in the second quarter, Kavin Kleikamp got Peshtigo on the board with a 49-yard touchdown run. The Clippers’ Danny Lodl tossed a touchdown pass to make it 19-6, but Peshtigo got it down to 19-14 by halftime on a touchdown run by Trevor Marquardt and a successful two-point conversion. “Kavin had a nice long run on a broken play and we scored before the half to make it 14-19 and we’re in the ball game,” said Peshtigo Coach Jeff Bayerl.
The Clippers found a ton of success through the air, with Lodl going 15-21 passing for 360 yards and five touchdowns. He threw three touchdowns in the fourth quarter to blow the game open. “We had a lot of defensive mistakes, breakfows in the defensive secondary,” said Coach Bayerl. “A team like tha,t throws it all over the yard, you have to be assignment sure and we weren’t.”
With the win, Sturgeon Bay is 3-2, while Peshtigo drops to 0-5. The Bulldogs take on Southern Door on the road this week. The Eagles are 5-0 this season, including a 34-6 win over Marinette on Friday.
Wolverines Get
Defensive, Stop
Cardinals Late Rally
The Crivitz defense produced two important stops in the fourth quarter to defeat Crandon on Friday, 21-14.
Crivitz took a 21-6 lead with 8:51 to play in the third quarter on a 24-yard run from Sean Christiansen and a point after from Stephan Allard.
Crandon cut the lead back to seven on its next drive, and the ensuing drive, a nine-play, 55-yard effort by Crivitz, ended in a fumble at the Cardinals’ 10 yard line, leaving the Wolverine defense with some work to do.
Crandon took over and ran the ball nine straight times until Crivitz forced a fourth and six near midfield. Quarterback Mason Mullins finally threw the ball, and Christiansen broke it up, giving it back to the Wolverines with 6:44 to play and a chance to ice the game.
They turned it over on four downs at Crandon’s 45 with 4:41 to go, and the Crandon offense instantly got to work.
Again, the Cardinals pounded the ball, running it for two first downs and reaching the Crivitz 39. That’s when things unraveled quickly.
A holding and two false starts put them at 1st and 30. A one-yard run and a sack of seven yards by Dominic Thoreson forced a fourth and 37, where TJ Mueller shut the drive down with a game-clinching sack.
Christiansen ran 10 times for 79 yards and a touchdown. Tegan Werner ran nine times for 61 yards and one touchdown, and Dillan Gehm carried nine times for 56 yards.
Werner returned the game’s opening kickoff 82 yards for a touchdown as well. Mueller had 12 total tackles including the final sack.
Crivitz (3-2) hosts Tomahawk (3-2) on Friday.
Niagara Falls to
White Lake/Elcho’s
Ground Attack 34-14
The Niagara Badgers were defeated by White Lake/Elcho on Saturday by a score of 34-14.
Tommy Martin had 245 all-purpose yards and a touchdown to go along with four defensive interceptions and 11.5 tackles. Aiden Colenso had 75 total yards of offense and a touchdown to go along with three tackles and a forced fumble.
Andar Olson had nine tackles, and Christian Hedmark led the team with 13.5 tackles. Gavin Neuens also had an interception.
White Lake/Elcho ran for 359 yards as a team, with Brandon Siemers and Keegan Klingler going for 165 and 152 yards, respectively.
Niagara (1-3) heads to Florence on Friday night. The Bobcats are 3-1 on the season, and are coming off a 36-18 win over Wabeno/Laona.
Titans Stay
Undefeated With
Big Win Over Eagles
The Lena/Saint Thomas Aquinas Academy Titans continued to do what they do on Friday in a 42-0 homecoming win over Suring: score a lot of points, play stalwart defense, and make big special teams plays.
The Titans took a 36-0 lead before the first half was over, and the way their defense was playing, a comeback was never in the cards.
Logan Graef scored the only touchdown of the first quarter, a 17-yard touchdown run seven minutes in. Tyler Shallow punched in the two-point conversion to give his team an 8-0 lead.
As he’s done all year, Sam Marquardt picked up Lena/STAA in the second quarter in a big way.
Just 19 seconds into the second quarter, he returned a punt 87 yards for a touchdown. Less than two minutes later, he ran in a touchdown from 15 yards, and he launched a 64-yard touchdown pass to Sidney Sylvester later in the period to make it 28-0.
Max Peterson ran in a three-yard touchdown just before halftime, and Shallow scored on an 11-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter to take a 42-0 lead.
On the other side, Suring was held to 33 yards of offense. Its ball-carriers ran 23 times for 33 yards and the team was 0-1 through the air.
“We played a complete game in all three areas: offense, defense and special teams,” Lena/STAA coach Dale Lange said. “As coaches, we were really happy to see us come out and play a full game from the start all the way to the end.  Defense attacked and made big plays, the offense moved the ball, and we scored again on special teams.”
It was the fourth straight game the Titans held their opponents scoreless to start the season, outscoring them 155-0.
Shallow led the Titans with 19 carries for 89 yards and a touchdown, Graef ran four times for 56 yards and a touchdown, Peterson took two touches for 54 yards, and Marquardt’s six carries went for 50 yards and a touchdown.
Marquardt’s only pass was the 64-yard touchdown to Sylvester.
Kyle Hodkiewicz, a Lena student in the class of 2023 that passed away in 2015 after a battle with leukemia, was selected as an honorary captain for the Titans for the game.
Lena/STAA travels to Algoma on Friday for a Peninsula Conference showdown that could provide the Titan defense with a significant test. The Wolves are 3-1 on the season, scoring 48 or more points in three of four games this season.
Vikings Blitz Rangers
With Big First Half
Gibraltar’s Braden Kita sliced open the Wausaukee defense for seven total touchdowns in a 50-12 win on Friday.
Four minutes into the game, Kita burst through the line for a 56-yard touchdown run, and he doubled it with a 55-yard score four minutes later.
By the end of the first quarter, he had his third long touchdown, this one a 46-yard passing strike to Braden Sitte.
He scored three different ways in the second quarter. First, he scored an 11-yard rushing touchdown, then he caught a 40-yard pass from Sitte, and finally, he threw a 30-yard touchdown to Will Lecy.
His seventh touchdown, a 53-yard run, came just over a minute into the third quarter, making it 50-0.
Wausaukee got on the board early in the fourth, with Connor Schroeder hitting Nathan Shaw for a 23-yard touchdown and Prestin Brunette intercepting and returning a Giovanni Mercier pass 43 yards for a touchdown.
Kita finished with seven rushes for 186 yards and four touchdowns, six completions for 129 yards and two touchdowns, and one 40-yard touchdown reception.
Wausaukee was 13-18 in the passing game, but it only turned into 92 yards. Schroeder was 6-10 for 32 yards and Luke Smith threw eight times, completing seven for 60 yards.
The Rangers ran the ball 21 times for 13 yards.
Tommy Phillips had two sacks for Wausaukee. Layne Rowley and Lukas Edlebeck each had a sack as well.
Wausaukee (1-3) gets Sevastopol at home this Friday. Sevastopol is 2-2, with wins over Gillett and Oneida Nation/NEW Lutheran and losses to Gibraltar and Lena/Saint Thomas Aquinas Academy.
Wolves Stop Tigers,
Rack Up Over
500 Yards of Offense
Algoma put up 532 yards of total offense in a 48-14 win over Gillett on Friday.
Grant Vandervest threw or ran for five touchdowns in the game, including each of the first four.
Jesse DeBauch found Jackson Pecha for an 11-yard touchdown just before the end of the third quarter, and Pecha ran in a 15-yard touchdown in the fourth for Gillett’s second touchdown.
Algoma’s Vandervest ran 17 times for 166 yards and completed 10 of 11 passes for 103 yards and two touchdowns.
For Gillett, DeBauch was 9-13 passing for 90 yards and a touchdown. Colten Sturm ran 11 times for 94 yards and Pecha took five carries for 29 yards and a score.
Pecha’s lone catch was the 12-yard touchdown in the third quarter. Ben Matczak and Sturm caught three passes for 32 yards apiece.
Lavonzell Smith and Tyler Slatky had nine tackles each for the Tigers.
Gillett (1-3) visits Gibraltar, another dangerous offensive team, on Friday. The Vikings are 4-0 and coming off a 50-12 win over Wausaukee in week four.