Story originally printed in the Tomah Journal or online at www.tomahjournal.com
Published - Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Holmen’s big plays sink Timberwolves
HOLMEN -- Tomah High School football coach Brad Plueger summed up his team’s downfall at Holmen in two words:
“Big plays,” he said.
Holmen ripped off 14 plays of 10 or more yards -- including six of at least 23 yards -- and they were the difference in the Vikings’ 35-28 victory over the Timberwolves Thursday at Holmen High School.
Tomah finished the regular season with a 3-3 Mississippi Valley Conference record and 3-6 overall mark. The Timberwolves still made the playoffs and will travel to Merrill Tuesday for a first-round matchup.
“If you look at how they scored, it was just big plays,” Plueger said. “They never really drove the ball.”
Holmen’s first drive consisted of just one play: a 72-yard romp by tailback Garrett Stokke. It gave Holmen a 7-0 lead just four minutes into the game.
Tomah took the ensuing kickoff and drove 70 yards in 14 plays. The drive consumed seven minutes and was capped by Joel Sweeney’s two-yard touchdown plunge. A bad snap aborted the extra point kick, and Tomah trailed, 7-6, with 1:16 left in the first quarter. At that point, Tomah had run 21 plays from scrimmage to Holmen’s one.
Holmen’s second play from scrimmage was a 55-yard run by Stokke, and that set up a 30-yard pass on fourth down from Ben Cejka to Dylan Guy. The extra point made it 14-6 just 14 seconds into the second quarter.
Tomah was forced to punt on its next possession, but Holmen muffed the kick, and Tomah’s Tommy Liddane recovered at the Vikings’ 35. On the next play, quarterback Tyler Von Haden hit sophomore wide receiver Alex Jaromin on a fly pattern for Tomah’s second touchdown. Von Haden then passed to Liddane for the two-point conversion to tie the game at 14-14.
Stokke broke loose on a 23-yard touchdown run shortly before halftime, and the Vikings took the opening kickoff of the second half and mounted their only sustained drive of the game to grab a 28-14 lead midway through the third quarter.
Tomah came back with an 80-yard drive and scored when Jaromin snared a pass from Von Haden at the 10-yard line. Jaromin did the rest by bouncing off three tacklers to reach the end zone. Clayton Barrix added the extra point to cut the gap to 28-21 with 2:16 left in the third quarter.
A quarterback sack by Jeffrey Repaal forced a Holmen punt, and the Timberwolves tied the game on Sweeney’s 20-yard touchdown run with 8:51 left.
Tomah forced another Holmen punt, but this time the punt pinned the Timberwolves at their one. Tomah managed to dig out to its own 39 before being forced to punt with 3:41 left.
Holmen revved up its big-play machine one last time. Passes of 17 and 16 yards took the Vikings into Tomah territory, and the Vikings scored when Cejka found an uncovered Stokke on a 39-yard touchdown pas. with 1:50 left.
The Timberwolves had a chance at the end. Sweeney returned the kickoff to the Holmen 40 and then took three handoffs to the Holmen 25. But with the Timberwolves running out of time, they had to put the ball in the air, and three incompletions ended the game.
Sweeney finished with 49 carries. Plueger said the Timberwolves had difficulty moving Holmen’s nose guard off the ball.
“We just couldn’t run as much with (fullback) Ross (Lynch) as we were hoping to,” Plueger said. “We had to give it to Joel and run to the boundary more.”
It was another impressive performance by the Tomah offense. The Timberwolves have averaged 34 points in their last five games.
“Offensively, we felt we did a lot of good things,” Plueger said. “We felt we needed just one more touchdown.”
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