HUMBOLDT — It would be difficult to draw up a more exciting start to a football game than Monday’s contest in Humboldt featuring the Cubs and the Caney Valley Bullpups.
Facing a fourth-and-three from their own 46-yard line, the Caney Valley coaching staff decided to not only go for it, but also to run their quarterback Andrew Anderson to try and pick up the first down. Never mind that the Bullpups’ signal-caller had just run the ball two plays earlier and had gone for negative-two.
The call caught the Cubs off-guard, however, and Anderson was able to score on a 54-yard touchdown scamper.
A two-point conversion made it 8-0 just two minutes into the game.
Humboldt’s Conor Haviland refused to be outdone and the Cubs’ star freshman took the team’s third-play from scrimmage 59 yards for a touchdown.
Unfortunately for the Cubs, their offense was unable to keep up with the powerful Bullpup attack throughout the game and Caney Valley was able to notch a 29-20 victory to give Humboldt its first loss of the season and drop the Cubs record to 2-1.
“Caney Valley was the best junior varsity team we’ve played so far,” Humboldt coach Jeremy Weilert said. “I don’t fault the effort of our kids, because they go out and do the best they can, but the key to football is getting 11 people to do the same thing at the same time and sometimes we just don’t get that.
“We always tell the guys to ‘do your job.’ Sometimes you think that doing somebody else’s job is the right thing, but if we can get 11 people to do their jobs at the same time, that leads to success.”
The Bullpups scored on another Anderson keeper on their ensuing touchdown drive to make the score 14-6.
Early in the second quarter, Haviland struck again though, this time on defense.
The Humboldt linebacker intercepted a Bullpup pass and was able to return the ball 67 yards for a Humboldt touchdown.
The Cubs’ sophomore quarterback Kyler Allen was able to find his favorite receiver Calob Klauman for the two-point conversion and tie the game at 14-14 with 8:43 remaining in the first half.
“Kyler does a good job for us at quarterback,” Weilert said. “He is still learning the position.”
It appeared like that would be the halftime score, until Anderson was able to find pay-dirt again with just 21 seconds left before intermission.
This time it was a one-yard quarterback sneak and Caney Valley converted the two-point conversion to take a 22-14 lead into the second half.
In the second half, the Cubs made a quarterback change and inserted sophomore Teryn Johnson into the game.
“Teryn hasn’t taken a lot of snaps for us,” Weilert said. “We are just trying to see what we can get from some of the kids, because you never know when you might need them (at the varsity-level). We are trying to make sure that we are as prepared as we can be for Friday nights.
“Teryn didn’t play a bad game. The decision-making will come with time and he may make for a pretty good quarterback.”
They could not slow the Caney Valley momentum, however, and an early Bullpup touchdown gave them a 29-14 lead.
Humboldt was able to answer when Johnson found junior receiver Wyatt Seufert for a touchdown late in the third quarter. A Johnson keeper for the two-point conversion failed and the game remained a two-score game.
Caney Valley was able to play keep-away from Humboldt for a majority of the fourth quarter. They had an eight-play drive and a nine-play drive that didn’t result in points, but that ran huge portions of time off the clock.
The Cubs only ran six offensive plays in the fourth quarter until the closing seconds of the game.
The Cubs will look to rebound next week when they host Fredonia’s junior varsity next Monday.
EARLY TEST: Cubs suffer first junior varsity loss to Bullpups
