Onekama wins 6th straight over Baldwin

By DYLAN SAVELA, Manistee News Advocate Sports Writer
Published: Friday, September 4, 2009 12:20 AM EDT
ONEKAMA — A first-quarter goal-line stop on fourth down at the hands of Baldwin’s defense did anything but discourage Onekama Thursday afternoon, as the Portagers went on to defeat the Panthers, 38-12. It was the sixth straight win for Onekama (2-0, 2-0) over Mid State Activities Conference-North foe Baldwin (1-1, 0-1).

“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.”