By Les Knutson
Sports Reporter
An impressive second-quarter offensive performance and a clutch fourth-quarter defensive effort combined Friday night (October 12) to produce a 30-26 high school football victory for Heron Lake-Okabena / Fulda as the Coyotes held off the MACCRAY Wolverines in a Southwest District Nine-Man battle at Maynard.
Four times in the fourth quarter, the Coyotes came up with defensive stops to preserve a four-point lead as neither team scored in the game’s final 12 minutes.
MACCRAY, however, was twice well inside the Red Zone (20-yard line), including starting with a first-and-goal from the Coyote five-yard line after a long return following an HL-O / F fumble near midfield.
Both times, however, the Coyote defense played tough and kept the Wolverines from scoring.
“For not playing all that well on defense in the first half, our guys really showed up in the second half and made a couple of strong goal-line stands when we needed them,” summed up HL-O / F co-head coach and defensive coordinator Jared Bourquin. “It was really a great team effort, involving contributions from lots of guys. We did some switching around which worked out well and we came up with several phenomenal late-game stops with our defense.”
For the game, the Coyotes came up with a total of five pass interceptions, 12 tackles for a loss, a trio of quarterback sacks and a pair of fumble recoveries as they won their third close game of the season and improved to 3-4 for the fall campaign.
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