Before you could even blink, the Hagerman Pirates had jumped out to a 14 - 0 lead against the Grizzlies last night at Holt Arena. The speedy spread offense of the Pirates looked great in that opening quarter. A 58 yard run and a 51 yard pass had the Grizzly defense wondering what had just happened.
On the other side of the ball the Grace offense struggled to get into a rhythm. The running backs were getting stopped at the line of scrimmage and Jensen was struggling to hit his receivers.
The Grizzlies showed some life early in the second quarter when Jensen hit Ackerman for a 32 yard touchdown pass. The defense then settled down and was able to keep Hagerman out of the end zone for the remaining of the half, but the offense just couldn't quite get another score before the 2nd quarter ended and they went into the locker room down 8 - 14.
The Pirates got the ball at half but couldn't move down the field and were forced to punt. The Grizzlies stuck with their game plan and continued to run the ball right at the Pirates defense, except now they were finally creating holes and ripping off runs of 8-10 yards a play. They easily marched down the field and Kendal Bitton found the end zone on a 5 yard run. The conversion was missed giving us a tie game at 14 - 14.
Another stop by the Grizzly defense forced a punt, but the Hagerman kicker placed it well and the ball went out of bounds at Graces' 10 yard line. On first down the Grizzlies went deep and found Ackerman running a fly route right up the middle for a 90 yard touchdown.
Once again the defense gave up nothing and Hagerman was forced to punt. The Grizzlies turned to the wildcat offense and it paid off as Trevor Simonson found room around the edge and ran 65 yards for the TD.
The Grizzlies are now sitting pretty at 30 - 14 with just 7:30 left in the game. The defense continued to play hard but a few missed assignments by the secondary allowed the Pirates into the end zone on a 17 yard pass with 4 minutes left.
With the score at 30 - 22, the Grizzlies hope to run some time off the clock and need to get some crucial first downs to get to the point where they can run the coach's favorite offense, the victory formation. They did exactly that. The Pirate defense was no match for the upfront blocking of the Grace O-line and before you knew it, the clock had reached :00 and the Grizzlies were celebrating their first ever trip to the State Championship game.
Grace will now play the winner of the Prairie/Troy game which is taking place at the Kibbie Dome tomorrow at 6pm. Both Prairie and Troy have excellent records and are tough teams, but the Grizzlies will be ready to take advantage of the opportunity and would love nothing more than to bring home the 1A state title for the first time in school history.
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