WALKING WOUNDED

It has been a knockout season for the Blue Hawk football team, and not in a good way.

Two more Hawk players were knocked out of action with concussions last week, on top of the two that were already KO’d the week before, as the Bonners Ferry Badgers knocked off the Hawks 33-12 in Bonners Ferry Friday.

Now 0-4 overall, and 0-1 in Western B play, coach Jared Koskela and his Hawks could be down as many as five starters for this Friday’s conference game with unbeaten Bigfork. The Vikings, by the way, are coming off a 37-0 road win over Eureka last week, which broke a two-year win streak by the two-time defending State B champ Lions.

This is obviously not a good time to be missing so many starting players, mostly due to concussions. Kade Pardee and Dane Chojnacky were put out with brain bruises in Bonners Ferry last week, Brad Lantz and Nate Wilhite were knocked out two weeks ago against Eureka and are still under concussion protocol observation, and Roman Sparks is also out with a non-concussion type injury.

“It is what it is, we will be going with an extremely young lineup here these next few weeks,” Koskela said. “We will have a lot of junior varsity players getting varsity experience, which is good. It’s just too bad that we will be facing a team as good as Bigfork with our reduced lineup.

“We’ll have to adapt,” he continued, “and show them some things they haven’t seen yet.”

Koskela wasn’t impressed with how loosely the game was officiated in Bonners Ferry Friday. “They were not protecting the players very well, we took a lot of helmet-to-helmet hits,” he said, “and they tended to let some stuff go after the whistle, too.”

As much as the loss in Bonners hurt the Hawks physically, Koskela was impressed with how some of his boys played in Idaho, especially Trey Fisher, who led Thompson Falls from his quarterback and linebacker positions.

The Hawk junior rushed for 83 yards and a touchdown and passed for 76 yards and another touchdown on offense, and pulled down an insane total of 23 total tackles, including 11 solo stops, with a quarterback sack, on defense.

“Trey is our workhorse, he just does not quit,” Koskela said.

Trevor Harris caught Fisher’s touchdown pass on a 20-yard play, and Fisher reached paydirt on a two-yard run.

Pardee caught four passes for 50 yards before being hurt, Harris had the one catch for 20 yards, and Derek Anderson and Trae Thilmony grabbed one reception each for three yards apiece. Thilmony also gained nine yards on two rushing attempts.

Defensively, Luke Comerford backed Fisher’s he-man effort with eight tackles, including four sacks and five tackles for loss, Jack Jacobson added seven tackles (with four unassisted), Harris seven, Thlimony six, and Justin Miller and Jordan Fisher three apiece.