Prep Football Round-up: Homecomings this week for Tri-County's Cloverbelt teams
The 2022 prep football season in Wisconsin has reached the midway point and the Homecomings are about to begin.
Both of the Tri-County Area's two Cloverbelt Conference teams have their Homecomings this week and they offer both Fall Creek and Osseo-Fairchild opportunities when their teams take the field for the Homecoming games this Friday, Sept. 16..
For Fall Creek its a chance to improve their playoff position. FC did that some last week with a big 25-19 win over Stanley-Boyd, their first win over the Orioles on the field (last year they won by forfeit due to the pandemic) since 2006.
FC led at halftime 13-11 and added to that lead with a key fumble recovery in the endzone for Bo Vollrath in the third quarter to go up 19-11.
S-B tied the game early in the fourth quarter but FC took the win when Leo Hagberg snagged a 26-yard TD pass from quarterback Eli Laube to improve their record to 3-1 overall and 1-1 in the Cloverbelt.
Hagberg also scored on another Laube TD pass in the second quarter and Laube threw a 15-yard touchdown strike to Ben Kelly for the game's first TD. Laube finished with 244 yards passing on 17-of-29 attempts. Kelly finished with 85 yards rushing, all of the Crickets' rushing yards. Hagberg caught six passes for 159 yards.
The key for Fall Creek in the win is holding S-B, 1-3 overall and 0-3 in the league to just 105 yards rushing, unlike the Mondovi loss the week before. FC defenders forced three fumbles with Ben Sackett doing so twice while making a team-best eight tackles. Ryan Whitllinger had seven tackles and Vollrath had six and also forced a fumble. Sullivan Monnier also had six tackles for the Crickets.
Fall Creek faces a Neillsville/Granton (2-2 overall and 1-1 in the Cloverbelt) team, in their Homecoming game at Schultz Field, that like the Crickets is rapidly improving. They gave Durand-Arkansaw quite a battle last week, losing only 17-12 on the road. Wardog back Ashton Brown threw a 71-yard TD pass and returned a kick-off for a touchdown. He also leads the team in rushing with nearly 400 yards so far this season.
Meanwhile for Osseo-Fairchild, Friday's Homecoming game vs. Elk Mound at Ward Field is a chance just to get a win and snap a 17-game losing streak. Both teams enter the game winless so far this season. O-F was crushed by Mondovi last week 50-6. The Thunder's lone score was a 50-yard pass from Lucas Frase to Drake Swett. Frase was 2-for-2 passing for 58 yards. O-F will need to have a better ground game than they did vs. Mondovi as they rushed for just 15 yards to the No. 3 ranked Buffaloes 285. EM was skunked last week by No. 2 ranked Eau Claire Regis 44-0. The Thunder also hope a tough schedule will help prepare them for this contest as the team's they've faced so far have a combined record of 13-3.
Speaking of big game but not of the Homecoming variety, Augusta has one against No. 7 ranked and undefeated Alma/Pepin this Friday in Pepin. Last week the Beavers won their second Dairyland Conference contest in a row 36-7 at home vs. Whitehall. After a Norse TD that made the score 12-7 AHS in the second quarter, the Beavers scored 24 unanswered, including a two-yard TD run by quarterback Brennen King just before halftime, a 27-yard scoring run by Ben Dickinsen and a 40-yard TD run by Levi White. All the two-point conversion attempts were good. Dickinsen rushed for 117 yards on six carries while Jackson Laxson led the way on the ground for Augusta with 144 yards on 14 carries and White finished with 72 yards on five carries. All told AHS amassed 364 yards on the ground and only attempted three passes during the game. King also scored on a one-yard TD run while throwing two two-point conversion passes.
Last year's match-up between Augusta and Alma/Pepin was an exciting, back n' forth contest won 22-20 by the Beavers when King threw a nine-yard TD pass to Tyler Brixsen with :52 seconds remaining in the game. The win was crucial in Augusta winning the Dairyland title and finishing unbeaten in the regular season which the Eagles will obviously wish to avenge. A/P is certainly the real deal in 2022 with a win on the road non-conference win over Wisconsin Rapids Assumption on their belts and a passing game led by QB Drew Seifert, who has throw for nearly 600 yards while running back Demetrius Bergmann has nearly 500 yards rushing. Alma/Pepin's top receiver is Evan Olson with nearly 400 yards in receptions. Last week all those players helped to overwhelm Eleva-Strum 51-6 at Central. Seifert threw for 184 yards on just four pass completions, three of them for touchdowns. Alma/Pepin running back Jackson Reisgraf scored two rushing touchdowns and led the team on the ground with 41 yards on three carries as 10 players had at least one rushing attempt for a grand total of 192 yards. Reisgraf also caught a 71-yard TD pass from Seifert. Bergmann had better stats on defense as he led the Eagles with 10 tackles.
Eleva-Strum could at least console themselves in the fact they scored the game's first TD on a two-yard plunge into the endzone by Ryan Julson on their first drive from scrimmage. He rushed for 93 yards to lead the team and the Cardinals still had a respectable 167 yards rushing. E-S's Reede Brown rushed for 55 yards on five carries. The Cardinals, 1-3 overall, will hope to get their first DC win this Friday at Independence/Gilmanton.
