Savage Heat make plays, stop Engineers

HOT SPRINGS – Playmakers make plays, it's what they do.

Savage Heat leaders Luke Waterbury, Brandon Knudsen and Kyle Lawson made timely plays at a key juncture and made a difference in the game as Hot Springs stormed to a 34-12 win over the visiting Harlowtown Engineers in the teams' season-opening 6-Man football game in Hot Springs Friday.

Now 1-0 in non-conference play, coach Jim Lawson and his Heat will be looking to make some more plays on the road this Friday as they travel to take on the Sunburst Refiners in another non-conference tilt.

Waterbury helped give the Heat breathing room after a tight first half against Harlowtown.

With the Heat leading only 14-6 with just over a minute left in the second quarter, Waterbury streamed into the Engineers' backfield and sacked quarterback Colter Wolstad, stripping the ball away from Wolstad and into his own arms in the process, giving the Heat the ball at Harlowtown's 24-yard line with 1:09 left in the half.

Three plays later, as the clock ran out, Knudsen scrambled around and fired a high pass into the end zone, which Lawson came down with for the 26-yard touchdown, turning Hot Springs' lead up to 20-6 and giving the Heat a little more of a cushion heading into the second half.

"We were able to capitalize on turnovers, and that one at the half was a big one," coach Jim Lawson said. "It was nice getting those points on the board like that heading into the locker room."

The Heat actually never were in too much trouble all night, moving to a 14-0 lead by midway through the second quarter and maintaining that advantage the rest of the way.

"It was a good effort, pretty balanced on offense and effective for the most part on defense," Lawson said. "We did enough good things to win."

The teams battled back-and-forth for much of the first quarter before the Heat broke through for the game's first score, a 12-yard touchdown run by junior Lincoln Slonaker with 51.3 seconds left in the period. The extra-points kick was no good leaving the score at 6-0 Hot Springs.

Waterbury scored on a two-yard run and Jack McAllister booted the two-point conversion to extend the Heat's lead to 14-0 midway through the second period.

After Harlowtown's Tayt Hanson scored on a 22-yard run to make the score 14-6, Waterbury then came up with his strip-sack to put Hot Springs firmly in control at halftime.

Slonaker added an 11-yard scoring run and Waterbury a nine-yard dash to the end zone for Hot Springs' two touchdowns in the second half, and McAllister connected on another two-point boot following Waterbury's TD for the final scoring for Hot Springs.

Hanson scored Harlowtown's last touchdown on a 17-yard run in the fourth quarter.

Coach Lawson was happy with his team, and glad to finally get some real game-time action.

"There is only so much you can do in practice, you can't really replicate experience any other way than by going out and getting it," he said. "We are going to get better, and this is the first step in that process."

Waterbury led the Heat offense with 69 yards rushing, Slonaker added 58 and Knudsen 50. Knudsen threw for another 76 yards with a touchdown and an interception.

Kyle Lawson led the Hot Springs defense with eight tackles, McAllister pulled down seven tackles and an interception in spite of a bulky apparatus wrapped around his broken right thumb, and Waterbury had six tackles, including the strip-sack before halftime.

The Heat were ranked No. 3 among Montana 6-Man teams in the initial 406mtsports.com rankings of the season early this week. The only other western Montana team cracking the top ten is No. 9 Valley Christian.