By Ed Muniz-Photos by Jenn-Anne Gledhill
**Additional Photos are available for purchase at https://justallsports.zenfolio.com/prospecthersey.**
Rivalry and memories of previous failures can motivate better than any speech heard before a competition.
To a man, that was the case for the John Hersey high school football Huskies.
Still fresh on their minds, a 24-23 home loss to fellow District 214-member Prospect Knights last season, was something the Huskies players couldn’t forget.
Last Friday saw the 7A, #2 ranked Knights host the # 9 Huskies in front of an estimated 3500 fans.
Both entered the game at 4-0.
It took Overtime and a long lean, but the Huskies paid back the Knights and handed them their first loss of the season with a thrilling 41-34 win and remained unbeaten at 5-0.
With the score tied at 34-34, the Huskies only managed to gain four yards on three tries and lined up for 23-yard field-goal attempt. A snap that skidded to holder Logan Riley threw the rhythm required to execute the play.
After securing the snap, Riley quickly got to feet, back-peddled to his right and threw it up for grabs.
Luckily for the Huskies, Sophomore tight-end Logan Farrell realized what happened and used his 6’6” frame catching the ball among several Knight defenders, leaned and stretched the football to the goal-line for the touchdown.
The added kick-after by Carson Koclanis gave the Huskies a 41-34 lead.
For the Knights, their turn to attempt to score moved the ball back to the 25-yard-line after a 15-yard penalty was assessed on the Huskies touchdown pass.
Knights quarterback’ Bradley Vierneisel quickly got those yards back gliding to the visitor sideline.
The Knights managed to advance to the 6-yard-line as the Huskies did before and faced their fourth down.
Needing a touchdown to possibly win or extend the game, Vierneisel dropped back to pass, his pass would be batted down by 6-10 defensive lineman Oleg Simakov.
“This felt like a playoff game,” said Huskies Coach Tom Nelson. “This is what it’s going to be, competitive football, two good teams executing at a high level, and you got to take advantage of opportunities when they come.”
“This week we talked a lot abut controlling what we can control, the preparation, the process we have to go through and we’re going to compete our tails off and we’re going to live with the result when it’s all said and done.”
Nelson also added.
“Like I told our kids, I don’t really want to play our best football in week five, I want to get better each week and play our best football when it counts, 10, 11, 12, as many as we can go.”
“The sun will still come up tomorrow and we’ll go back to work like we always do,” said Knights coach Dan Deboeuf after the loss.
“I’m happy for their guys, they played well enough to win and we didn’t, we made too many mistakes. This will be a great opportunity to reset going into the rest of conference play and then onto the post season.”
The game began with a bang! Special teams would be a major factor in this game. The Knights’ Jack Berman took the opening kickoff and stopped 77-yards later in the Huskies end-zone giving the Knights an early lead.
The Huskies countered with two kick-returns of 96 and 97 by Ryan Stearns and Carson Grove respectively.
Offensively, both teams showed their firepower and speed.
Knight quarterback Vierneisel was a threat on the ground or through the air. He was elusive looking down-field or stretching a play grabbing yards.
Vierneisel scored three touchdowns himself, running 69-yards for one and sneaking for another while also catching a pass in the end-zone as well.
His favorite receiver was senior Frank Covey who hauled in 13 passes including and 80-yard touchdown.
Vierneisel finished with nearly 360-yards of total offense.
The Huskies used a two-quarterback attack, and it works well for them.
The first half offense was guided by Carter Hansen who is more a running-style quarterback. His ability to run the ball gives the Huskies several options via the run.
The second half saw Colton Gumino take the reins. His offense features more a passing style but he to is rather elusive on the move.
The Huskies used both styles to score.
Speedster Brett Kersemeier led the ground game for the Huskies. He tallied 169 yards including a 4-yard touchdown. Charles Meister also contributed to the scoring, adding a 5-yard touchdown run.
The Huskies Gumino also connected with Farrell from 7-yards out for the touchdown pass.
Defensively you would think with so much scoring that neither team had an advantage, but for the Huskies, it was a home loss last year that gave them something extra in this game.
“Prospect week is always personal,” said Evan Naumowicz. “We grew up playing together, most of us played in the same pee-wee program so it just means a lot more. For me it meant a lot more, I worked as hard as I could all week and it paid off.”
“We felt we were looked down on and personally, we felt we could compete with them if not better and we showed it tonight.”
Naumowicz gave it his all, constantly finding himself around the ball and giving up his body to make the tackle. He left the field still bleeding from the bridge of his nose showing the wounds of battle.
Another Defensive standout was junior Outside Linebacker’ Brandon Pflomm. Pesky at the least, he too came into the game looking to make every stop he could.
“This is really the first time all season we competed like that. We were on the field really competing and giving our all, we’re all tired after being on the field a long time. We had to dig deep and find it at the end.”
This rivalry has been going on for so long and we knew the last two years we came up short so this game was so important for us.”
