Chris Peterson Havre Daily News cpeterson@havredailynews.com
After a successful regular season, in which the No. 7 Chester/J-I Hawks went 7-1 and finished second in the Northern C Division, the Hawks took their first step in a long journey towards the state championship with a dominating 42-18 win over No. 8 Power-Dutton-Brady Saturday in Chester in the first round of the Class C football playoffs. The Hawks have dominated the competition all season long, with their lone loss coming at the hands of unbeaten Centerville. And they continued that domination on Saturday as they used a potent running game to grind the Titans into submission. “It was a big win for our football team,” C/J-I head coach Jim Vinson said. “The weather was not very good. It was cold and windy, so both teams really had to focus on running the football. Luckily we were able to have a lot of success running the ball and we were able to do a good job of containing them offensively.” The Hawks got on the board first when running back Derek Fraser found pay dirt from 12 yards out to give C/J-I an 8-0 lead. The Titans answered on a 10-yard scoring run by Mike Clark cutting the lead to 8-6. But Fraser soon struck again, this time on a 32-yard touchdown run to put the Hawks up 14-6. “Derek is a sparkplug for us,” Vinson said. “He is a motivator and he is a very intense football player. On offense he is a very versatile player. “He does a little bit of everything and he has scored just about every way possible this year,” he added. “He is very good we can get him to the outside and that is what we did against (PDB) and he was able to make some big plays for us.” The Hawks extended their lead, when quarterback Tyler Han connected on a 46-yard touchdown pass to Callen McKinley to go ahead 20-6 in the second quarter. The Titans answered again with a seven-yard touchdown run by star quarterback Talon Allen, but they couldn’t keep the Hawks out of the end zone before the end of the half, as star running Matt Wicks scored on a 13-yard rushing touchdown to put C/JI ahead 28-12 at the intermission. In the third quarter, the Titans scored the only touchdown, in an otherwise defensive quarter in which the two teams fought to a stalemate, except for a three-yard touchdown pass from Allen to Travis Hodgson, bringing the Titans within ten points at 28-18. With the Titans back in the game, the Hawks defense stepped up and held Allen and the Titans scoreless for the remainder of the game. “Talon Allen is an extremely gifted athlete,” Vinson said. “He is a state champion sprinter and he can beat you in a number of different ways. But we were able to contain him and that is a credit to our defense.” While the defense was holding firm, the Hawks’ offense focused on burning clock and putting the game away. There is no better player designed for that role than Wicks and he played it perfectly by grinding out his second touchdown of the game from 18 yards away to put the Hawks up 36-18. In addition to his two touchdown runs, Wicks racked up 192 rushing yards in the win as well as an impressive 20 tackles. “He is just a great football player,” Vinson said. “He is just an impact player on both sides of the ball. We were in a position where we needed to run out the clock and in large part because of Matt, we were able to do that. It was important that we controlled the line of scrimmage and we did that on both sides of the ball.” Fraser finished off a great day for the Hawks defense by intercepting an Allen pass and returning it 35-yards for a score, to put the final nail in the coffin. With their victory, the Hawks will head to No. 2 Wibaux (9-0) for a Class C quarterfinal game on Saturday. “They are a very good football team,” Vinson said. “And we are going to have play really well on both sides of the ball if we want to win. But these kids are really focused and for them, losing is just not an option.”
