Cloquet Football Beats East 7-0

Wes Vork-NSO

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Sept 4

Kerry Rodd-NSO

There were a lot of tears last year when the Cloquet Lumberjacks fell to the Duluth East Greyhounds in the section championship game. The Jacks opened the season at home Friday night, hoping to exact a bit of revenge against the Greyhounds and that is exactly what happened as Cloquet eked out a 7-0 win at Rol Bromberg Field on a long pass play for a touchdown with under a minute remaining.

The game was a wild, hard-hitting affair with the pendulum swinging wildly in both directions throughout. Both teams appeared to have started a momentum swing at times only to blow their chances with penalties and stout defensive efforts by the opposition.

After a scoreless first half, the Greyhounds appeared to have the upper hand midway through the fourth quarter. However, the Lumberjacks parlayed a motion penalty and a series of thunderous tackles into a fourth down and 5 from the 14 yard line. The Lumberjacks caused an incomplete pass and eventually moved the ball deep into East territory because of the strong right leg of Thomas Rogers and his punting efforts.

“This game was won because of our defense,” exclaimed Tom Lenarz after the game. “On offense we kept shooting ourselves in the foot, but the defense was fantastic. Jeff Ojanen and the rest of the staff did a great job of getting the defense ready.”

Throughout the game, the Lumberjacks had the better of the special teams play. East struggled with their punting game and used trickery to apparently hide the fact that they did not have a punter who could hit the ball deep. Meanwhile, Rogers pounded the ball time and time again, giving the Jacks room and getting them out of trouble despite their less than stellar offensive performance.

“When you struggle on offense you need to have the defense come up big and they did,” commented Lenarz. “Between the defense and special teams we were able to pull out a huge win.”

A poor punt by East located the Jacks on the Greyhounds
23-yard line, making them face a 3rd and long situation. Quarterback Tyler Tollerud found enough time to hit wide receiver RaRa Jones for a touchdown in the left corner of the end zone, scoring the only points of the
game with 31.9 seconds remaining. Jones broke free of a defender and managed to find enough cushion for Tollerud to drop the ball in his hands.

Thomas Rogers then added the extra point.
After Rogers pinned the Greyhounds deep in their own territory with yet another booming kickoff, Duluth East tried several passes to get the tying score, only to be intercepted by Lumberjack Joey Singpiel. Then in a show of maturity not always seen of college or pro players, Singpiel looked for an open area of the field and took a knee rather than return the ball and risk a turnover, thus ending the game.

With the win the jacks start the season 1-0 and will travel to Hibbing on Friday to take on the Bluejackets.

Kerry Rodd can be reached at Kerry@northlandsportsonline.com