A young Cook County High School football team traveled to Cook on Thursday, September 1 to face the equally young North Woods Grizzlies in their opening game of the season and came away with a 36-8 loss.
North Woods Garrett Abramson scored two short rushing touchdowns as the Grizzlies took an 8-0 first period lead and a 20-0 lead at halftime.
The Vikings scored their lone touchdown on a one-yard run by sophomore quarterback Josh Prom and on a two-point conversion on a pass from Prom to Jack Haussner in the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach and they were down 28-0.
On paper the game looked like it would be a good match. Last year the Grizzlies traveled to Cook County and beat the Vikings 28-8 in the Vikings’ first ever nine-man game played in Cook County and then Cook County exacted some revenge when it beat North Woods in the playoffs.
Both squads ended their 2015 seasons with 6-4 won loss records. North Woods returned three players who are seniors this year while Cook County returned two seniors. Still, one of North Woods’ seniors Jaylin Crain, a two-way starter, was injured in a summer workout and is still not up to speed; so both teams went into this year’s opening game lacking players with a lot of experience. But the Grizzlies fielded a team with some big kids on it, said Coach Mitch Dorr.
“We were definitely the smaller team,” Coach Dorr said. “They were bigger than us at nearly every position.”
Lacking size and experience could have been a game killer for the Vikings, but Coach Dorr said his kids never quit. “They played hard throughout the whole game. We’re really young right now and we made too many mistakes and that really hurt us. We had nine penalties and that’s too many. Still, we did move the ball on North Woods. It’s just that when we were getting something going we would have a mistake or penalty to stop a drive. We’re learning to play right now. We have lots more to learn but this team will continue to improve.”
One advantage for North Woods was that it has an extremely deep younger pool of players to choose from, with 65 kids grades 7-12, while Cook County has 26 kids playing in grades 9-12, and while North Woods has a lot of juniors on its roster, Cook County is also thin there, starting a lot of freshmen and sophomores.
“I was proud of our kids’ effort. I thought Ethan Sporn ran the ball really hard. I’m sure we will see North Woods again this year, and then we’ll have to see how much progress we have made,” Coach Dorr said.
The Vikings play Carlton on Friday, September 9 at 7 p.m., and then go on the road for two weeks before coming home on September 30 to play Mountain Iron- Buhl at 7 p.m.
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