MLBO burns Eagles 12-0

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- Two big plays by the BOLD offense was all the Warriors needed Saturday afternoon as they blanked the New Ulm High School Eagles 12-0 in non-conference football.

Both Warrior scores came on big plays -- a 79-yard run by Nick Olkins in the second quarter and a fourth quarter 76 yard touchdown pass from Matt Erickson to Ben Kuzina.

"We played a much better football team (today) than we did last week," said Eagle coach Rick VanRoekel who saw his team hammer Luverne 43-15 last week. "When you play BOLD -- this is their big game of the year coming to play a 4A school -- and we knew that they were going to be tough. But we had big penalties today that really killed us."

Both teams fought through a scorless first quarter. But towards the end of the first quarter, the Eagles, who host Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City next Friday night, began a march from their own 20-yard line.

An eight yard pass from quarterback Jon Koeckeritz (14-for-24, 126 yards in the game) to John Besser and a five yard run by Spencer Dickinson had the Eagles on the move.

Koeckeritz gave New Ulm a first down with a 13-yard run to end the quarter. Kevin Neidecker's five yard run (18 carrries, 138 yards) coupled with a 17-yard completion from Koeckeritz to Brett Burgau had New Ulm on the Warrior19-yard line.

New Ulm moved down to the 14-yard line before a false start backed them up five yards.

Koeckeritz wiped that out with a seven yard completion to Besser as the Eagles were poised to score from the BOLD 12-yard line.

But a holding call wiped out an eight yard run by Neidecker before Luke Gronewold, who connected on a 37-yard field goal last week, missed on a 45-yard attempt.

"Penalties hurt us on that drive -- we got the ball down to the (five yard line) but a holding call hurt that," commented VanRoekel. "Last week the penalties did not hurt us but this week they (six penalties for 67 yards) just killed us."

And BOLD would take advantage of that just three plays after Gronewald's missed field goal.

After a one yard run by Sam Neubauer and a no gainer by quarterback Erickson, halfback Olkins took a handoff, broke through an arm tackle at the line of scrimmage, broke an ankle tackle by Matt Schneider and raced 79 yards for a touchdown at the 8:38 mark of the second quarter.

"We had him (Olkins) twice on that run and could not stop him -- they made the tackles on us when the needed to," said VanRoekel.

BOLD and the Eagles would battle each other plus turnovers in the third quarter as the Eagles' Luke Gronewold picked off an Erickson aerial but Koeckeritz was victimized twice by interceptions.

New Ulm would again piece together a march that went from their own 25-yard line to the Warrior seven yard line. But once again, a holding penalty on third down from the seven moved the Eagles back and Gronewold misfired on a 28-yard field goal and New Ulm came away empty again.

Tnen BOLD's second big play appeared. On a third down and six from their own 24-yard line, Erickson found Ben Kuzina wide open down the right sideline for a 76-yard scoring strike and a 12-0 lead with 7:34 left in the game.

'You can't blame the heat -we just did not execute and they got some big plays,'Van Roekel said. "We had some good drives but we need to work on execution and tackling.."

Travis Aufderheide led New Ulm with eight solo tackles and two assists with Gronewald recording three tackles and an interception.

BOLD 0-6-0-6=12

NEW ULM 0-0-0-0=0

FIRST QUARTER

BOLD : Olkins, 79 run. PAT:Failed.

FOURTH QUARTER

BOLD: Kuzina, 76 pass from Erickson. PAT: Failed.