Homecoming week festivities at Hills-Beaver Creek High School will feature a very important football game tomorrow night.
The Hills-Beaver Creek-Ellsworth Patriots will take on Westbrook-Walnut Grove, the state's No. 1-ranked nine-man football team, at 7 p.m.
The stakes will be high as H-BC-E and W-WG are the lone unbeaten teams remaining in the Southwest Ridge Conference.
H-BC-E downed Sioux Valley-Round Lake-Brewster 28-0 to improve to 4-0 overall and 3-0 in the league Friday in Brewster. W-WG upped its records to 4-0 and 3-0 with a 49-14 thrashing of Lincoln HI Friday.
Led by Darrin Tietz, the SRC's most valuable player from 1999 returning to W-WG's backfield, the defending league champions will present H-BC-E with its stiffest competition of the season.
"They are a really quick, very physical team," said Patriot coach Dan Ellingson. "This will be a big challenge for us. We won't be able to make any mistakes, and we can't let them make big plays."
H-BC-E will need to come up with another performance like the one they turned in against SV-RL-B in order to upend W-WG tomorrow.
The Patriot defense dominated SV-RL-B through three and one-half quarters of play to set the stage for victory. H-BC-E's offense took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves while scoring touchdowns in every quarter of an eight-point victory.
"Field position was the key in this game," Ellingson said. "It seemed like we had good field position the whole game."
H-BC-E's offense set the tone for the game with its first possession after the opening kick.
The Patriots put together a 65-yard drive capped by David Top's 23-yard touchdown pass to Lance Crawford at the 9:37 mark of the first quarter. An H-BC-E penalty led to a missed extra-point attempt after the touchdown.
Crawford's touchdown was the first of many big plays he turned in during the contest. He made all four of H-BC-E's pass receptions for 56 yards and hauled in two conversion passes from Top. Crawford came up with a team-high nine tackles, two fumble recoveries and one interception on defense.
H-BC-E, however, was unable to celebrate Crawford's touchdown pass very long.
Raider Paul Paplow fielded the ensuing kick and returned the ball 84 yards for the game-tying score. A failed conversion pass kept the score knotted at six.
The field position factor came into play late in the second quarter, when the H-BC-E defense forced the Raiders to punt from their own 5-yard line.
H-BC-E returned the punt to the Raider 25 and proceeded to move the ball to the 12. Lyle DeBoer, who toted the ball 19 times for 116 yards in the contest, capped the short drive with a 12-yard burst with 37 seconds remaining in the first half. A Top-to-Crawford conversion pass made the difference 14-6.
Crawford gave the Patriots good field position again in the third quarter when he recovered a SV-RL-B fumble on the Raider 28.
Ten plays later, Chris Willers scored on a two-yard touchdown plunge at the 6:32 mark of the stanza. An incomplete conversion pass followed the touchdown, leaving the Patriots with a 20-6 cushion.
Another scoring opportunity presented itself to the Patriots when the Raiders were trying to punt late in the third quarter and the snap from the center sailed over the punter's head.
H-BC-E's Brant Deutsch recovered the fumble on the Raider seven, and Chris Reid scored from seven yards away on the first play of the fourth quarter. Top's conversion pass to Crawford made the difference 28-6.
SV-RL-B scored two touchdowns in the game's final 7:00, but the Patriots had the contest sealed at that point.
Paplow ran 74 yards for a score with 6:13 left to play to make it a 28-12 game. Jim Morrison scored from one yard out with 54 seconds remaining before the Raiders capped the scoring with a successful conversion run.
"I don't think the game was as close as the final score indicates," Ellingson said. "Until Paplow broke away for his long touchdown run, they had 40 yards in total offense for three and one-half quarters of play. We had a little let-up in the end, but we really held them down most of the game."
Team statistics
H-BC-E: 177 rushing yards, 56 passing yards, 233 total yards, 14 first downs, 11 penalties for 52 yards, one turnover.
SV-RL-B: 161 rushing yards, 43 totla yards, 204 total yards, eight first downs, eight penalties for 36 yards, four turnovers.
Individual statistics
Rushing: DeBoer 19-116, Reid 16-49, Willers 6-5, Top 7-2.
Passing: Top 4-17 for 56 yards, DeBoer 0-1 for zero yards.
Receiving: Crawford 4-56.
Defense: Crawford nine tackles, two fumble recoveries and one interception, DeBoer five tackles, Justin Van Maanen five tackles, Lee Walraven two tackles and two sacks, Deutsch one tackle and one fumble recovery.