FOOTBALL

Prairie Knolls at BSMS (7th Grade)

The Belvidere South 7th Grade Bucs played host today to the Falcons from Burlington Prairie Knolls.  Belvidere started the game on offense running up the middle for 2 yards.  The second play showed a fake up the middle with Shane Mains taking it outside left end.  He sprinted 63 yards for the touchdown making the score 6-0.  Luke Hearn's run off right tackle added 2 points giving Belvidere an early 8-0 lead.

Belvidere's defense showed it's usual toughness, backing up the Falcons 17 yards before punting back to the Bucs.  Another quick march down the field ended with Hearn taking it in from the 6 yard line.  A penalty on the 2-pt conversion forced a try from the 13 yard line.  Here Taylor Arrango completed a short pass to Ian Staples  who calmly turned outside and ran it in to make the score 16-0. 

The Falcon's offense again took the field to again lose yardage before a punt attempt.  This time Trevor Austin pushed an offensive blocker so far back into the backfield, the punt ended up being blocked!  Cole Johnson recovered on the 32-yard line and ran it in from there to make the score 22-0.  The conversion attempt failed.  The first quarter ended on this play.

In the second quarter, it was much of the same for the Buc defense.  Burlington had more negative yards than positive as ends Hearn and Mains were so often in the backfield they should have been Burlington's halfbacks.  Another punt by Burlington set up the next Buc touchdown as Cole Johnson had a nice run of 19 yards to the right of the field, then straight up the middle by Hearn scored the touchdown.  It was a 6-yard TD run.  The extra point was scored by Mains on a kick, his second of the year.  The score was now 29-0. 

The scoring ended in the second half as substitutions were in the game more often than starters.  To their credit, Burlington still never got close to scoring as Belvidere still got down to the 5 before stalling on a drive. 

The offensive totals were meager, but only because many of the drives were short.  The defense was again so dominant that the offense had many "short" fields to work with.

Defensively, not enough can be said about D-Ends Hearn and Mains.  Up the middle Brad Ford had a great game with over 8 tackles, many in the backfield.  Anthony DeMito again had a strong game at middle linebacker to go with Cole Johnson and Arrango on the outside.  Dylan Barr and Nick Umlor were stoppers on the outside the few times Burlington got outside the contain, with Nick Umlor contributing with 2 of the best tackles made by a 7th grade football player in a long time.  In the 4th quarter, Umlor stepped up a drilled a back along the sideline.  Two plays later, Umlor stopped a back in his tracks as he made the perfect form tackle.  It came at the end of a well played Buc game and really showed a strong finish.   

Coachs' Comment:

"I told my team on Wednesday that our goal was to be ahead by 4 touchdowns by halftime.  We did that and I was proud of the effort our team made to achieve that goal.  But now we've got our biggest game of the season Saturday.  We travel over to Belvidere Central and all our good wins will feel tainted if we can't finish strong against them.  It's the highlight of the season and we've got to be prepared to battle hard.  I'm looking forward to it."

Coach Rabideau
BSMS
7th Grade Football