Jumping to the head of the class
With a convincing victory against the Warriors, the undefeated Vikings make a strong case for being one of the top teams in Class C
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Untested in their first two games, the Charlo coach wondered how his team would respond when they were finally challenged.
The Vikings more than answered his question Friday night in Arlee as their always-dangerous offense put up 35 points and their defense held the Warriors out of the end zone until the final seconds of the game in a convincing 35-8 Western C victory.
“I’ve been asking them how they were going to respond when somebody smacked you and they really hit us. We kind of had to impose our will on them. It took a while, but eventually we kind of wore them down,” said Mike Krahn, the coach of the 3-0 Vikings.
In both their routs this season, the quick-strike Vikings used big plays to put the game away early -outscoring their opponents 68-0 in the first quarter –, but on Arlee’s wet field Friday the Vikings had to work for every yard they gained in the first half.
After quarterback Chico Stipe punched it in from the 1 to cap their 48-yard, opening drive, the Vikings didn’t score again until about midway through the second quarter, when Kolton Andrews, who sat out most of last season after tearing his ACL in the third game, broke a tackle and sprinted to a 26-yard touchdown to give Charlo a 13-0 lead.
“I just went outside and I saw two guys coming for me. I just lowered my pads and the next thing I know I was spinning out of it and heading for a touchdown. It happened so fast,” the junior said of his first touchdown since a 4-yard run against Lincoln in the second game last year.
After spending all offseason strengthening and gaining flexibility to his knee, Andrews wasn’t finished and added a 37-yard touchdown run in the Vikings’ 22-point, game-clinching third quarter. Andrews finished with 108 yards on eight carries.
“It’s a good feeling, when you know you worked hard and it pays off in the end,” Andrews said.
With a blanket of rain clouds pushing down on the field making it dark enough that the game started with the lights on and a chill in the moist air, it felt like late October and the first half, definitely had a playoff feel, with both teams lowering their shoulders and violently crashing their pads on every whistle.
After Andrews’ first touchdown, the bigger Warriors started pounding the ball and methodically moving downfield. But a drive that started on their 27 and ate up more than five minutes of clock, stalled inside the Vikings’ 20-yard line, when the Warriors failed to convert a fourth-and-7 and went into the break trailing 13-0.
“The first half was kind of knockdown, drag out. We had to earn every yard and we knew it was going to be that way. We expected it to be that way and it was,” Krahn said.
In unfamiliar territory, with a game still contested in the second half. The Vikings didn’t have to wait long for the big plays to come in the second half. Austin Bauer made one cut after receiving the opening kickoff and bolted 60 yards for a touchdown, which killed any momentum that the Warriors had after their long drive at the close the first half.
