The Britton-Hecla football team kicked off its fall campaign on the right foot with a 20-16 win over Great Plains Lutheran on Friday.
Coach Jacob Skogstad’s crew will host Florence-Henry for its home opener this Friday at 7 p.m. Florence-Henry lost 54-0 to Hamlin in its season opener.
“I feel like we played well at times, and poor at times,” said Skogstad. “We showed that we are a very young and talented team. We are young because we had many opportunities to finish that game, and waited until the end to do it. We are also very talented. We showed what we can be as a football team in spurts.”
This week the B-H boss is hoping his club can perform more consistently.
“Our challenge for this week is just to put together a whole game - a full team effort where everyone is doing their jobs and meshing together.”
The Braves did suffer one injury on Friday. Graham Fosness will likely miss this week’s contest.
Friday’s opener was not decided until the final seconds. Great Plains Lutheran cut a 20-8 deficit to 20-16 on a long pass play with just 5:09 left in the game. Britton-Hecla was not able to run out the clock and the Panthers had a final chance, ending on a fourth down play in Britton-Hecla territory with under 40 seconds remaining.
The opening half was a defensive battle. The Braves took an early 6-0 lead but then the defenses took turns making stops and B-H led 6-0 at intermission.
Great Plains Lutheran took an 8-6 lead late in the third stanza. After blocking a B-H punt, the Panthers took over on the Braves’ 30. After picking up a first down Britton-Hecla’s defense forced a fourth down but GPL connected on a touchdown pass with 1:28 remaining in the quarter and added the conversion for an 8-6 advantage.
Britton-Hecla responded quickly when Bryce Hawkinson broke loose for a scoring run at the 10:50 mark of the fourth period for a 12-8 lead. The defense got the ball right back on a pass interception and scored again at the 9:02 mark to set up the final minutes.
Hawkinson had a big night for the Braves, running the ball 20 times for 149 yards (7.5 average) and scoring two touchdowns. Quarterback Jaxon Zuehlke came up with the other score. B-H ended up with 198 yards rushing and 12 passing for the game.
B-H (1-0) 6 0 0 14 - 20 GPL (0-1) 0 0 8 8 - 16
RUSHING: B-H, 39-198 (Bryce Hawkinson 20-149, Jaxon Zuehlke 8-13, Isaiah Jackson 7-13, Daniel Person 2-13, Peyton Pearson 1-3)
PASSING: B-H, 1-9-12 (Zuehlke 19-0-12)
RECEIVING: BH (Person 1-12)
