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Chisago Lakes 61, North St. Paul 6

Chisago Lakes 42, North St. Paul 8

Yes, you saw that right.  The Wildcat football team play the North  St. Paul Polars at Chisago Lakes High School twice in a row – once to end the regular season and once to open the Section 3AAAA playoffs.  The playoff win by the second-seeded Wildcats over the seventh-seeded Polars gives the Wildcats a semifinal matchup at home against the third-seeded Simley Spartans at 1 p.m. this Saturday.

Wildcat head coach Ryan Anderson said, “It’s an odd situation when you have to play the same team two weeks in a row, especially when that first game is a little lopsided.  At the end of the day, we are just going to take it one game at a time.  We are just going to worry about the opponent in front of us. Our goal is to continue to get better every opportunity we get to play football.  That’s how we approach things each week.”

In the regular season game, the Polars decided to pack the box to prevent fullback Evan LaValle from punishing them up the middle, as he has done to most opponents this season.  And that part of their strategy worked, as LaValle carried the ball six times for just 33 yards.  But, unfortunately for North St. Paul, the Wildcats do not have just a one-dimensional offense.  They switched to running more sweeps, and it paid off in a big way.  Carson Langevin carried the ball eight times for 213 yards and four touchdowns, including runs of 75 and 79 yards.  The Wildcats piled up 396 yards rushing, with Jadon Greene, Josh LaVine and LaValle each scoring a touchdown.  There wasn’t much need for the passing game, but quarterback Gavin Lewis’ only completion of the day was a 35 yard touchdown pass to Blake Siefert.  On defense, Siefert had an interception, and LaVine and Reed Bleymeyer each recovered a fumble.  And Riley Estes had three sacks as the Wildcats completely shut down any semblance of an attack by the Polars.

The playoff game on Tuesday, October 24 went much the same way, with the Wildcats dominating in all three phases of the game.  

Gavin Lewis had a perfect game passing, going six for six for 120 yards and a four-yard touchdown pass to Xavier Taylor.  The Wildcats finished just short of 200 yards on the ground.  

Carson Langevin led the way with sixteen carries for 79 yards and a touchdown.  Evan LaValle scored twice, and Josh LaVine and Jadon Greene each scored a touchdown.

Section Semifinal Preview

In last year’s state tournament opener, the senior laden Simley Spartans led 40-0 at halftime and went on to beat the Wildcats 46-14.  Head coach Ryan Anderson and the Wildcat team are looking forward to this Saturday’s matchup between the Wildcats and the Spartans.  Anderson said “I think it’s going to be a really good game.  

They’re not last year’s Simley team and we’re not last year’s Chisago Lakes team.  I like what our team has been doing.  Our defense has been playing better these last couple of weeks and our offense has been clicking and taking care of the football.  And our special teams unit has been helping out the offense and defense.  

We are playing good complementary football, and if we can continue to do that, it should be a really good game.”

The Wildcats got the second seed and a home game in the Section 3AAAA semifinals because of a special seeding rule.  In Minnesota high school football, the teams are normally seeded by their QRF rankings, meaning that the Spartans, with a QRF of 69.2, should have been seeded ahead of the Wildcats, with a QRF of 64.9.  But when the QRF rankings are that close together, a tiebreaker is applied.  Since the teams didn’t play each other head to head, the tiebreaker is best overall regular season record.  The Wildcats (6-2) had a better record than the Spartans (5-3), so they were awarded the second seed, which gives them home field advantage this week.

Simley has a new wrinkle thrown into the mix for the game.  Senior quarterback Tim Pietsch suffered a broken collarbone in the Spartans’ last regular season game, so freshman Christian Urbina stepped in for Simley’s quarterfinal game against the South St. Paul Packers.  Urbina threw four touchdown passes – one in each quarter – to lift the Spartans to a 28-6 win over the Packers.

With blowout wins in the last two games, the Wildcats have had the opportunity to give workhorse fullback Evan LaValle a lighter workload, leaving him fresher for the biggest game so far this season.

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