LG falls to Wittenberg-Birnamwood

By Valorie Brecht The Loyal-Greenwood (LG) football team took a loss at home in Loyal last Friday night against Wittenberg-Birnamwood (WB). However, they scored more points than they had in any other game this season, with the exception of their 39-0 win over Neillsville-Granton.

WB scored on the first play of the game with a 70-yard hook-and-ladder. They also completed the 2-point conversion to go up 8 points right away. However, on their opening drive, LG marched the ball back right back down the field and scored on a 22-yard run by Eli Zettler. Tryn Scheel got the 2-point conversion to make it 8-8. WB made it back into the end zone before the quarter was over, leaving it 14-8.

In the second quarter, WB kept it full speed ahead, scoring 16 unanswered points.

“They took it to us in the second. We did not play up to our potential,” said LG co-head coach Chris Lindner. “We had a talk at half time.”

LG came into the third quarter ready to make some noise, and that they did. They got the ball, drove down the field and scored. Colton Sandelier had a 3-yard touchdown run and Cain Toufar ran a yard for a touchdown. The 2-point conversion was no good on either of those attempts. Still, those two touchdowns were enough to make it 30-20 with WB leading.

LG scored again a quarter of the way into the fourth quarter, this time with Scheel running it in from 3 yards out, as well as completing the 2-point conversion. Unfortunately, WB came alive again in the fourth, scoring 22 points. LG was unable to get a stop and the game finished with a score of 52-28. If it wasn’t for WB’s 22 points in the final frame, the score would have been much closer in the end (30-28).

Lindner said defensively, his team needed to work on tackling. He still thought his team had some shining moments in the game, such as when WB kicked off, fumbled and LG took it back to score in the second half. He also felt the offense was pretty solid.

“The offense did a good job. Eli made himself a running threat,” he said.

On the rushing side of things, Scheel had 27 rushes for 99 yards, Zettler had nine rushes for 79 yards and Sandelier had 11 rushes for 35 yards. On the passing side, Zettler had two completions on seven attempts for 18 yards.

“What we need now is consistent play. We’re kind of on a roller coaster right now. We played well in the first quarter, third and part of the fourth quarter, but the second quarter and the second half of the fourth quarter were not good.

“Our last couple of games, we’ve shown we can play with some tough opponents and be competitive. We just need to put the pieces together.”

LG will take on Spencer-Columbus at Spencer this Friday at 7 p.m.

RITA HANSON/RJ’S SMILING SOUL PHOTOGRAPHY