Results from Maconaquah for Friday, September 29th
Braves 43 Cass 26 – First win vs Kings since 1998
Maconaquah head football coach Tyler Campbell was two years old the last time a Brave team had beaten Lewis Cass (16-13 ot in 1998). Friday night Campbell probably aged 20 years after watching his troops erase a 26-16 fourth quarter deficit and slammed the door on the Kings, 43-26. The Kings had previously won 19 straight vs Mac and 25 of the last 26 neighboring fueds.
Campbell was all smiles after the huge Three Rivers Conference "Senior Night" win that kept MHS in the league title hunt. "Our kids never quit," he said of the fourth quarter rally. "The seniors kept fighting and the younger kids fought for the seniors. We woke up (after Cass took a 26-16 lead to start the fourth period) and our offense and defense rose to the occasion."
The win shoved Mac's league slate to 5-1 (5-2 overall), while Cass fell to 3-4 on the year and to 3-3 in conference action. The Braves will finish the regular season with TRC road contests at Wabash and Rochester in hopes of claiming their first conference title since 1991.
Cass took the second half kickoff and dominated the third quarter, running 24 plays to Mac's five. The Kings used all but 34 seconds of clock in the third stanza (11:26 to :34) and stretched their lead to 26-16 on their first snap in the final 12 minutes. . . . things then got crazy.
Trailing 26-16, AJ Kelly returned the ensuing kick to his own 39. The junior speedster became Maconaquah's all-time leader in kickoff return yardage with the 18-yard return. Senior quarterback Braxton Birner and junior receiver Fuddy Kile then took over and delivered the knockout punch in the last 11 minutes with a passing frenzy.
First, Kile took a 37-yard Birner pass to the house for a TD, cutting the Cass lead to 26-22 at 11:08. After Mac's defense forced a short punt, the Braves got the ball back at the King 42. After Kaleb Shelton and Kile caught passes for first downs, Birner hit Kile with a short six-yard TD pass on third-and-goal. Freshman kicker Nolan Tarrh, who had given the Braves a 16-12 lead the end of the first half with a 21-yard field goal, booted one of his four PAT kicks, 29-26.
Maconaquah's suffocating defense then got big plays from DJ Elliott and Marcell Sims and the Braves got the pigskin back at the LC 42 once again. After Birner and Shelton played pitch-and-catch to the 27, the Braves got to the 17 facing a crucial fourth-and-one. Birner got the call up the middle and the huge first down by inches after a measurement. On the next play, Kile hauled in a 17-yard Birner pass and shoved Mac's lead to 36-26 with 3:23 showing.
Sims and Kelly stymied Cass with big defensive plays on its next drive and Shelton slammed the door with a fumble recovery at the King 38 with 2:49 remaining. The Braves then alternated carries between Shelton and Ty Galvan before Shelton scored from the two with :43 showing, providing the final score, 43-26, after Tarrh's PAT kick. The 43 points is the most points ever scored by Maconquah against Cass in the 57-game series history dating back to 1965. Cass now leads the all-time series, 14-43.
The Braves held leads of 7-0 and 13-6 in the first half on short TD passes from Birner to Oakley Reeser and Kile. Tarrh's field goal at the :05 mark gave the hosts a slim 16-12 lead at intermission. Birner, who was the state's fifth-leading (yardage) quarterback going into the game, finished with 326 yards and five touchdowns on 22 of 33 accuracy. Kile, meanwhile, nearly outscored the Kings by himself hauling in a school-record four TD passes from Birner. The big scoring night moved him into a third place tie with Vernon Robinson (198 points) on the all-time scoring list at Maconaquah. After not catching a pass in the first quarter, Kile nabbed 11 passes the rest of the way and finished with a career-high 213 yards (six yards shy of Dave Alspaugh’s 219 vs North Miami in 1967.) “I give credit to my offensive line. It’s a team game,” Kile said following his record-setting performance. “All of our receivers are good and we stepped up our game when we had to.”
Shelton and Kelly topped the tackle charts with 11 and 10 stops respectively. Jacob Isley (9), Brady Dausch (8), Dakoda Dauenhauer (7), Austin Ringeisen (6) and Elliott (6) joined in with big tackles. Shelton and Elliott recovered Cass fumbles as Maconaquah's opportunistic defense now owns a staggering +18 turnover margin through its first seven games. The Braves have committed just six turnovers this season, while forcing 24 opponent turnovers.
Sideline notes . . . . . In last weeks win at North Miami, Shelton became the sixth player in Maconaquah history to surpass 1,000 receiving yards in a career. He now has 1,088 and joins teammates Kile (2,519) and Kelly (1,433) in the elite group at MHS.
Dausch, a junior, forced a pair of fumbles vs North Miami and became Mac's all-time leader with eight forced fumbles. He currently shares the single-season record (five).
With the "bell-ringing" 43-point outburst vs Cass, the Braves are now averaging 35.6 points per game. The best offensive average in Maconaquah's 61-year history was set iin 2019 when the Braves averaged 35 points in a 7-3 season under coach Austin Colby (now coach at Kokomo).
Following the game, Coach Campbell and the victorious Braves presented statistician Chuck Finster with a #50 Brave jersey for his 50 years of service as Maconaquah's statistician and football information director.