Onekama wins 6th straight over Baldwin
By DYLAN
SAVELA, Manistee News Advocate
Sports Writer
Published:
“Give Baldwin a lot of credit, I mean, gosh, we were knocking on the door about three times in that first quarter and came away with nothing,” Onekama coach Jim Hunter said of the first 12 minutes, which wound up scoreless for both sides. “But, I also give my kids some credit too, because I’ve coached a lot of teams that, when that happens, they’ll get frustrated, they’ll start thinking ‘oh man nothing’s going to go right’ ... but, I thought our kids really stepped up.”
The first two steps came in the second quarter, when Onekama’s senior quarterback Dan Gillespie threw for two of his three touchdown passes — the first, a 13-yard toss to Thomas Koon at 6:25 and then a 15-yard pass to Jake Matthews with 1:20 remaining in the first half. After converting on both two-point attempts, Onekama took a 16-0 lead into halftime.
Although down, Panthers’ coach Doug
Bolles wasn’t too disappointed with
his team’s first half of football
for the year, since the Panthers
were awarded a forfeit victory last
week. “I was really happy with the
first half,” he said. “We played
right with them.”
Onekama increased its lead, however,
in the second half. After a Baldwin
four-and-out drive to start the
third quarter, the Portagers went
right to work.
Tyler Fogarty recovered a fumbled
ball in the end zone to put the
Portagers up 22-0 at 8:42, and on
the ensuing kickoff, Fogarty
recovered an Onekama onside kick.
After another successful drive
capped off by Gillespie’s third
touchdown pass — this time to Austin
Barnett — the Portagers were up
30-0.
“We made some adjustments at
halftime and we followed through on
them, and put a couple more scores
on the board,” Hunter said. “A
couple of our kids made some big
plays, which our offense is set up
to do. It was nice to see the kids
do that.”
The Panthers showed resilience,
however, by senior quarterback Cregg
Bolles scoring a touchdown on a
quarterback keeper with 18 seconds
left in the third, and scoring again
in the fourth with the game’s
longest play — a 60-yard touchdown
run by junior Aaron Thomas.
“Overall, I liked the fact we didn’t
quit at the end and were able to
score a couple times in the second
half,” Bolles said. “We try to take
things like that away.”