Highland falls in battle of unbeatens

RIVERSIDE -- In a battle of unbeatens, it is important to grab hold of momentum. Highland High School did that early in Friday's Class A District 6 football game against BGM of Brooklyn.

After making the visiting Bears punt on their opening possession, the Huskies ran a dive into the middle of the line for a yard, then ran a dive into the middle of the line for a 79-yard touchdown run by Cole Adamson for a 7-0 lead with 6 minutes, 30 seconds left in the first quarter.

Highland had a chance to take advantage of that momentum when Trey Lasek intercepted a halfback pass on the next possession and then ran for 40 yards on second down.

'You could say that I was concerned,” BGM coach Jerod Burns said. 'I thought it would be a long night after those two long runs. We had some nerves going on to start with.”

The Huskies had a first-and-10 on the Bears 21 that became a 4th-and-31 due to penalties and punted.

'I think we shot ourselves in the foot with the penalties that we had,” Highland coach Scott Morel said. Unofficially, the Huskies had 9 penalties for 85 yards and two other times offsetting unsportsmanlike penalties were called. 'I've got to take a look at the film, make sure we find what we did wrong, correct it, and do a better job next week.”

Momentum got away from the Huskies.

'We got that 15-yard penalty right when we were about to punch the ball in and go up 14-0,” Lasek said. 'I think that killed us. That might have been the swing of the game right there - penalties and leadership.”

Highland wasn't able to break off any more long runs like the first two.

'They started bringing eight guys and their back-side linebacker was really killing that play,” Lasek said. 'We were just one guy away from breaking another one all night long.”

The teams exchanged possessions until 2:20 left in the first half when BGM recovered a Highland fumble and scored two plays later for a 7-7 game at intermission.

The Huskies got the ball first in the second half but went 3-and-out, then Noah Beck ran five consecutive times as BGM drove 62 yards for a 14-7 lead. A third Beck TD came with 2:08 left in the third quarter.

Highland took to the air on its next possession with a key completion to Mason McFarland that gained 14 yards and a 34-yard TD pass to Jordan Sosa 10 seconds into the fourth quarter made the score 21-14.

'That was a broken play,” Lasek said. 'Once I got out of the pocket, I was looking right to left and luckily Sosa was the first kid I looked at because I was running for my life. It all worked out because we work on that kind of thing in practice.”

BGM converted a field goal on its next drive after Highland's defense kept the Bears out of the end zone on two tries from the 1.

Facing a 3rd-and-19 on Highland's ensuing possession, Lasek threw a quick screen to McFarland for 49 yards.

'We had to open things up,” Morel said. 'We wanted to take the top off. I thought our receivers did a great job of getting open.”

Lasek scored on fourth and-goal from the 1, then took a bad snap on the point-after-touchdown kick attempt and threw a completion to Cory Stewart for a 24-22 deficit.

'There's nothing to lose so I was going to huck that thing, no matter what,” Lasek said.

An onside kick was thwarted and the Bears took a 31-22 lead six plays later on Beck's fourth TD. Beck had 225 yards on 36 carries.

An interception ended Highland's next chance and the Bears ran the clock down to a minute before turning it over on downs.

'They have some great athletes over there,” Burns said. 'That quarterback made some huge plays for them because he is a great athlete. He did some really special things for them.”

Down 21-7, Morel was not worried.

'We know we could come back,” he said. 'We battled against Alburnett. We battled back against Lynville-Sully. Our thing is we need to be resilient and continue pushing forward. We had to be resilient with all of the injuries. We have learned to battle through adversity. We had a lot of young guys step up and that just shows the heart of this team. They have a great big heart and the way these kids are, they are always going to battle back.”

'We just ran out of time,” Lasek said.

Highland is 4-1 and 0-1 in the district. Highland plays at No.7 Pekin Friday. BGM is 5-0 and 1-0.