Hawks end on positive note with two second-half touchdowns

UNITY 57, RIB LAKE-PRENTICE 12

A difficult 2022 season ended with another defeat for the Rib Lake-Prentice Hawks, who, for the second time this season, were no match for the Unity Eagles in a 57-12 loss Friday night in Balsam Lake.

This was a non-conference matchup that provided both teams opportunities to spread out some playing time. That was especially true for the 7-2 Eagles, who led 16-0 after one quarter and 43-0 by halftime.

Unity went 5-1 and finished second in the Lakeland Conference behind 6-0 Grantsburg. One of those wins was a 35-0 win over the Hawks on Sept. 2 when only a quarter of the game was played in Prentice due to thunderstorms.

“They have a lot of seniors,” Rib Lake-Prentice co-head coach Jonah Campbell said. “I think they have 13 seniors. They must have a good out-of-season program. They have a lot of bigger, stronger guys. They’re not huge by any means or tall by any means, but they’re thick. They just run their offense and they run it well. It’s smashmouth through the line. Their strengths kind of attack our weaknesses, which is that middle of the line area where we have the most injuries and most back-ups playing. They run it pretty solidly. They’re just crisp.”

The good news for the Hawks is they were able to end the season with some positive vibes by scoring two touchdowns in the second half to double their season total of scores to four.

Campbell said the Hawks started to move the ball on their last drive of the first half. They carried that into the first possession of the second half, which was capped by a 20-yard touchdown pass from Michael Borchardt to Dominic Quednow.

“It sparked some energy, some fun on the sideline,” Campbell said. “We scored on our first drive of the second half with the varsity guys in, then we pulled out those guys. At the end of the first half we kind of ran out of time. We threw the ball a little bit and got some success going but ran out of time at the end of the half. We came into the second half, continued with what we finished the first half with and were able to get a touchdown. With the running clock you only have so many shots. We were able to get one more on our last drive of offense.”

The last touchdown came on a simple swing pass to Dominick Classen, who was able to make some guys miss and run 31 yards for the score with 42 seconds left in the game. It was the senior’s first career touchdown. Classen led the Hawks with six receptions for 66 yards.

Borchardt, in his last game, completed 11 of 17 passes for 122 yards and no interceptions. Quednow caught three passes for 54 yards.

As has been the case all year long, the Hawks young and banged up lines simply weren’t strong enough to hold up against the veteran roster the Eagles have.

The Hawks got a stop on Unity’s first drive when they recovered a fumble in the end zone. But Unity scored on its next two drives of the quarter and, even with the Eagles rotating several ball carriers and only throwing the ball one time, they scored four more times in the second quarter and two more in the second half.

Unity finished with 285 yards rushing on 33 attempts. Quarterback Brody Allen’s only pass went for an 18-yard touchdown to Avery Flaherty and Taylor Gariepy added a 74-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.

The Hawks had just 16 yards rushing on 25 attempts.

“Defensively they’re very aggressive,” Campbell said. “They’ll blitz two guys on almost every play trying to take away different types of plays in the middle or outside. Their blitzes are strong and fast. They created some matchup problems getting angles and being able to block them. But again, that comes with experience of doing it for the last couple years. Just being stronger and faster comes into play with their experience.”

Quednow had eight total tackles in the loss, Logan Schmidtfranz had seven and Michael Bulter had six.

As the Hawks head into the off-season ahead of what they plan to be their last year as an 11-player co-op in 2023, Campbell said the emphasis is on the young guys growing physically and putting in the work to get stronger. The Hawks’ roster carried just four seniors in 2022 and Borchardt and Classen were the only ones to make it through all nine games. On the line, Ryan Griebel unfortunately got hurt early and Jacob DiFrances was out late in the year. Freshman Jackson Isaacson stepped in and started most of the year on the offensive line. He and sophomore center Brady Heiser could be key players to build around up front next fall.

“There will be a big push for the offseason training,” he said. “We’ll see if we can get the juniors, if they all come back out, and the sophomores to step up. The freshmen that had to step up and play played well. We just lack size. Hopefully we can get some of these guys some size and strength.”