CHERRY- The Cherry Tigers have chewed up and spit out every opponent that’s dared to set foot on their home turf this season by an average score of 78-6, so no one was expecting a miracle when the 3-5 North Woods Grizzlies came calling Tuesday for a first-round playoff game.
No miracle was observed.
The Tigers put on another machine-like display of gridiron prowess as they thoroughly dominated the youthful Grizzlies 72-0, bringing North Woods’ foray into the ranks of nine-man football this season to an end.
Cherry scored early and often, rolling to a 24-0 first quarter lead and a 52-0 margin at the half.
Grizzlies’ defenders often made the right reads but didn’t have the athleticism to match the Tigers speedsters. That was the case late in the second quarter when the Tigers’ Isaac Asuma took a pitch left and was about to be tackled when he smartly lateraled the ball to Mason Heitzman, who cut back across the Grizzlies defense and outraced everyone 50 yards for a touchdown. It was the first of two scores in the final four minutes of the half that resulted from North Woods turnovers.
After surrendering the ball and another touchdown to open the third quarter, North Woods put together its best drive of the night, a 12-play, 48-yard push from their own 33 to the Cherry 19. Aided by a roughing the passer penalty that negated an interception return for a touchdown, the Grizzlies offense churned out yards on the ground, with Kaden Gornick, Nick Abramson, Talen Jarshaw, and Trajen Barto all contributing. But the drive fizzled out when a Barto flare pass to Jarshaw fell incomplete on fourth-and-six.
It’s hard to imagine a team that’s down 72-0 having anything to smile about, but Head Coach Joel Anderson found a way to inject a little joy into the waning minutes of the game when he sent senior lineman Noah Westman in at running back. Westman ran the ball into the line for no gain, but his teammates reacted as if he’d scored a go-ahead touchdown, all happy that Westman’s wish to carry the ball once in his career had been fulfilled.
“It was good to see the smile on his face,” Anderson said. “It was good to see him get a good finish and a memory that he won’t forget.”
While the loss was decisive, Anderson nonetheless had praise for the Grizzlies’ play after the game.
“I’m very proud of our effort tonight,” he said. “We played our hearts out tonight. Cherry is a fantastic football team and they’ve proven that time and again. But we made them play hard for a long while when we kept the ball in our own hands. We needed to limit those turnovers and not give them extra points.”
Anderson commented on the Grizzlies’ inability to punch the ball into the end zone after long drives that’s plagued them the last two games.
“As the field gets shorter, guys get tighter,” he said. “We’ve kind of struggled getting guys open and getting the ball in their hands when we start seeing eight guys there in the box. That’s something we’ve been working on, and we have to clean some things up. Sometimes you just don’t get there when you want to.”
Given his squad’s youth and inexperience, Anderson noted that the Grizzlies beat and lost to the teams that they should have this season and said the team’s experience will pay dividends next year.
“The teams that we struggled with were junior and senior dominated,” he said. “That’s indicative of a younger, less experienced group. We’ve got a lot of guys now with experience who are coming back, and we’ve got some very good football players.”
The Grizzlies’ first season back at the nine-man level in five years ended with a record of 3-6.