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The Barnesville Trojans and Staples-Motley Cardinals squared off in a high school football team in Staples on Friday night. It had been discussed during the week that the game may not be played, due to the Cardinals having a very young team, however, the decision was made to go ahead with the game and the Trojans recorded a 56-0 win.
“Tons of credit to Staples for playing the game,” said Barnesville Head Coach Bryan Strand. “We were glad to be able to get the game in. We were without Jonny Robideau due to illness, and injuries kept Braeden Bredman, Spencer Schumacher, John Roller and Ethan Larson out of action. It was a good week to rest dome guys and get healthy for the Hawley game. I would expect all the aforementioned players would be back by Wednesday’s game.”
A 34-point first quarter set the tone for the night. Zachary Bredman hit Tate Inniger with a 6 yard TD pass and then carried the ball into the end zone from one yard out. Hunter Blilie scored on a 10 yard run, Andrew Pederson scored on a 15 yard run and Pederson then went 40 yards with an interception for another score. Isaac Maneval made four of his five extra-point kicks with the other one being blocked. A second quarter TD on a 3 yard run by Aaron Baker put the halftime score at 40-0 after Maneval had another PAT try blocked.
“We started off with a huge first quarter and even before the quarter was out we were subbing pretty heavily on both sides of the ball,” noted Coach Strand. “I felt all of our kids came in and played hard and gave fantastic effort. We forced 4 turnovers on the night, had a kickoff return for a TD and an interception return for a TD. Again, I felt the kids from Staples played hard till the end and I was proud of all of our team and their efforts throughout the night. We had agreed that once the score hit 35 points we would go to running time for the night, which is one of the reasons we didn’t get a ton of plays in. We also had a short field most of the night.”
The final Trojan TD’s came in the third quarter on a 72 yard kickoff return by Gannon Bolgrean and a two-point conversion run by Blilie, and a 7 yard TD run by Avery Schroeder, followed by Bolgrean’s conversion run.
Bolgrean was the top ball carrier with 62 yards on 6 carries. Sixteen different players had carries for Barnesville as they finished with 144 rushing yards.
Staples-Motley only had 50 yards of total offense. The Barnesville defense was led by Dawson Gregg with 5 solo tackles and 4 assisted tackles. Baker, Pederson and Carter Swenson each had an interception, Jaxon Ernst had a sack and Christian Lien recovered a fumble.