BLHS FOOTBALL: Panthers’ offense stalls, falls

Published 3:43 pm Monday, November 8, 2010

The Bonney Lake football squad made the excursion north to face 8-2 Meadowdale High Saturday and ran into a Mavericks squad that extinguished the Panthers’ postseason aspirations 41-28.

Before the Panthers knew what had hit them they were behind 14-0.

The opening BLHS tally came midway through the first quarter when Austin Marshall took a hand-off from signal caller Chris Brown and took off on an apparent reverse. Marshall zipped the ball 10 yards to Nathan Day, who was standing in Meadowdale’s end zone wide open.

The second TD came when the Panthers went into their wildcat offense and Markus Kaelin took the direct snap and followed a wall of escorts to paydirt from 5-yards out.

Trailing 21-14 with six minutes remaining before halftime, Tyler Babukas, who ran for 130 yards on a dozen carries, culminated a 5-minute drive when he scooted for a 10-yard TD. After Alex Hall drilled his third PAT kick of the night, the scoreboard read 21 apiece at intermission.

Both squads picked up where they had left off early in the third quarter as the Maverick signal caller scored on a 15-yard bootleg to make the score 28-21 two minutes into period number three.

Bonney Lake answered when Babukas took a screen pass in the flat and sprinted 83 yards to tie things at 28.

The remainder of the third period was a punt-parade between the 20-yard lines. Early in the fourth period, it appeared Bonney Lake was winning the battle for field position, when a Panther punt came to rest at the Meadowdale 5-yard line.

After two attempts, on third-and-nine, QB Nathan Ball found Kyler Larson flying down the middle of the grid for a 92-yard hook up that gave Meadowdale the advantage for good.

“We just made too many mistakes in the game and it cost us,” coach Chad Barrett said.

Brown finished with 260 passing yards.

BLHS ended with a 7-3 mark.