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Bobcat Gridders Down Raiders, Face Kane In D9 AA Championship Rematch (11/06/17)

Using a dominating running game and stifling defense, the homestanding Clarion Area Bobcats downed the Brookville Raiders 55-12, at Memorial Stadium last Friday night (November 3rd), in their District Nine Class AA football semifinal game.

With the victory, the Cats will now meet the Kane Wolves in the Championship game, this Friday night (November 10th), at Brockway’s Frank Varischetti Field. The game is a rematch of last season’s Championship game, won by the Wolves 21-14, played at the same location. Both teams enter the game undefeated.

Cutter Boggess, Camden Boggess, Sam Minich, Colton Rapp, Logan Minich

The Bobcats came out strong, scoring 20 points in the first quarter. The first two scores came on runs by Keeven Weaver. Weaver’s first touchdown came at 8:50 from twelve yards out. The conversion attempt failed and the Cats led 6-0. Then at 5:36, Weaver ran the ball in from the Brookville nine yard line. Archer Mills’ kick was good, moving the Clarion lead to 13-0. Colton Rapp then scored his first of three straight rushing touchdowns, on a ten yard run, with 3:18 left in the quarter, moving the score to 20-0, Cats.

Rapp’s second touchdown, from ten yards out, came at 11:55 of the second quarter. The kick was good and it was 27-0. The Bobcat lead would move to 33-0, with Rapp going in from the Raider fifteen, at 3:18.

Rapp ran for 129 yards, on 16 carries, on the night. He now has 843 yards on the season and moved to second place  all-time in rushing yardage for the Cats. Rapp currently has 3,783 yards, and trails only Kyle Cathcart who has 4,449 yards.

Brookville got on the board with Bryan Dworek hauling in a 13 yard pass from Jack Krug, cutting the Bobcat lead to 33-6, with 7:04 left in the half.

Clarion linebacker Zak Bauer intercepted a pass, leading to the only score of the third quarter. Logan Minich scored his first of two touchdowns, on the night, on a 4 yard run, at 5:58. Quarterback Spencer Miller ran for the two point conversion to give the Cats a 41-6 lead that started the “Mercy Rule’s” running clock for the rest of the contest.

With just under a minute off the clock, in the fourth quarter, Brendan Zerfoss scored on an eight yard run. Mills’ kick was good, pushing the Bobcats’ lead to 48-6. Krug hooked up with Brandon McGranor, on a 37 yard scoring pass, with 7:09 left in the contest, posting the last points for the Raiders, making it 48-12, Bobcats.

Minich scored his second touchdown, on an 8 yard run at the 2:33 mark. Mills kicked the extra point and the final was set at 55-6.

Logan Minich had 81 yards rushing on 16 carries, Weaver had 54 yards on 5 carries, Zerfoss had 54 yards on 6 carries, Sam Minich had 27 yards on 4 carries and Spencer Miller had 37 yards on two carries.

Colt Stimmell had 8 pancake blocks, Zak Bauer had 4 and Jacob Selker had two. Stimmell had 14 tackles. Bauer had 11 tackles (3 for loss). Nick Porciello and Thomas Wurster each had a sack and Sterling Conner had an interception.

BOBCAT CAREER RUSHING, ALL-TIME TOP FIVE

Kyle Cathcart                          4,449
Colton Rapp                       3,783
Ian Corbett                              3,660
Chris McSwain                       3,567
Damien Slike                          3,092

CAT QUOTES

Coach Larry Wiser: Obviously, I’m impressed with what our line did and all our backs out there. We got the ball to our fullback, to our two Z-backs and to our two tailbacks. The line did a great job opening up some holes. Even in that second half, I thought we were going to have to throw the ball a little bit more. They were putting nine in the box and we were still hitting it.

The first quarter was just outstanding defense. The defense played great the whole game. Those guys, Lee, Scott, Nate, Tim and Shane (assistant coaches), did a great job getting them ready. We had four or five tapes on Brookville. We talked about taking things away that they do the best. And I thought we did that and consequently, they had to go to some things that they weren’t used to doing. As a result of that, there were some turnovers, holding them to three downs.

Our kids were high energy the whole game. Cutter Boggess, a freshman, did a nice job on some returns setting us up, from a punting standpoint and kickoffs.

We’re getting ready to go back to the drawing board and get excited about Monday.

Kane plays great defense. I’d like to think we are somewhat similar to each other. Except they’re holding last year’s title. So this year we need to change that.

Colton Rapp: We were firing on all cylinders tonight. We came out hot. That’s the best we came out in the first quarter; usually we’re a little bit slow starting. Tonight we came out, we started pouring it on. We were opening holes and we were hitting them. It was a good night for the backs and the line.

Logan Minich: We came out and everyone was doing a good job, blocking well and we we were hitting holes good. Our receivers were blocking well. We were just able to push the ball down the field on them. Our offense was pretty good tonight.

Sam Minich: Our line did a great job tonight, opening holes for us. The running backs did a good job hitting the holes. We just came out firing in the first half, which is what we needed to do because we didn’t want to keep them in the game.

Camden Boggess: We came out hot. The line blocked really well. They blew them off the whistle. We had big, gaping holes to run through. We could have had anybody run through those holes.

(Great Work, Cats!!!! Beat Kane!!!!)