2023-11-05 03:34:28
WESTHOPE, N.D. — Blake Mattson threw two touchdown passes and ran for five more as North Prairie pulled away from Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn on Saturday afternoon in the semifinals of the North Dakota 9-man state semifinals.
Mattson threw two touchdown passes (32 yards to Cole Henderson and 16 yards to Carter Casavant) in the first quarter.
He then scored on runs of 4, 3, 27, 15 and 1.
“We have two guys on our backfield who are really good runners, but Blake had a couple nice touchdown passes today, so you’ve got to respect our pass game in that respect, but nothing is done without the heart and soul of our team, which is our big guys up front,” North Prairie coach Josh Keller said. “They did a great job. Playoff football in November in cold weather, it’s all about the line of scrimmage. Westhope is a great team with great coaches, and Walker Braaten is a heck of a player, so to limit them to 36 points is pretty good.”
Walker Braaten of Westhope-N-G scored on a 65-yard kickoff return, a 10-yard run, a 46-yard pass to Treyton Lesmann, a 31-yard pass to Jayden Nelson and a 20-yard pass to Will Artz.
“You don’t stop a player like him,” Keller said. “You just limit him. We talked about reading our keys up front, and we didn’t want to give up any big plays in the secondary. If you can keep everything in front of you, rally and tackle, that’s the best you can do against a guy like that.”
North Prairie, which improved to 11-1, lost in last year’s state semifinals to New Salem.
“We had a guest speaker last night, Steve Kleinjan, New Salem-Almont’s coach, and he talked about how games like this are program-builders,” Keller said. “You play for the guys that came before you and the guys that are next to you, but you also play for the future. We have a lot of young kids right now, elementary school kids that want to be these varsity guys. It’s a program-builder, and games like this are how you build your program. Steve was our speaker, and we figured that New Salem beat us last year, so we might as well learn a thing or two from them.
“We watched the state title game from last year, and whatever it took, we were going to get there this year. The guys have done a great job of believing in themselves, their teammates and their coaches.”
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