Huskies advance to semi-final game

The Huskies hosted Hanna-Elk Mountain in the first round of State Football playoffs on Friday. Burlington won with a final score of 58 to 6. 

“Playoffs are special. It’s win or go home and anytime you are able to play on your home field, it’s a huge advantage,” said Coach Trent Aagard. “We have only played HEM twice in my coaching tenure. Both playoffs and both a 1-4 matchup. Last time we were the four seed and were able to pull off the upset, so that is kind of cool. HEM had some big physical guys, and it was a good win for us.” 

Burlington racked up 411 offensive yards with Kole Walker leading the way and earning three touchdowns, one of those being an impressive 79-yard run. Chase Basset added two touchdowns and Carsten Schlenker, Teddy Ball and Brad Davidson all added one. 

“For the most part we were able to move the ball the way we wanted to. We need to clean up a few mistakes that caused us to stall out a couple of times. We were able to spread the ball around and got contributions across the board. Kole made good decisions in our spread offense that really helped the team out. He has done a good job of that all season. Carsten and Matt (Tempany) both made some impressive, contested catches. We had a handful of guys bust out some good runs. The highlight would have to be Kole’s 79-yard TD run. I like our blocking up front with James (McNiven), Matt, Taft (Winters), and Cole (Gotfredson). It was good to see the team effort.” 

Defensively, the Huskies had 39 tackles, a sack, four pass breakups, two fumble recoveries and one blocked kick. “I thought we did a good job of bringing some real intensity. We took away what HEM has been successful with and made them play in a way that was a little different for them. I thought we brought good pressure up front and our back end did a good job of rallying to the ball and covering receivers. I like the physical way we played across the team. It was good for us to have to adjust to some things we may not have really expected to see out of HEM. It was a good win for us.”

The Huskies will host Little Snake River on Friday for the semi-final round of the playoffs with a kickoff at 1 p.m. “Now we get ready for LSR. They are still the reigning champs, so we will need to be ready with our A-game. We are glad to be playing that game in Burlington. We played them week one and there has been a season of growth and changes by both teams,” said Aagard. 

BURLINGTON 58, H.E.M. 6

RUSHING – Burlington 28-199 (Kole Walker, 8-132 yards and 3 TDs). PASSING – Burlington 8-of-11 for 180 yards (Walker, 5-of-7 for 127 yards and 2 TDs; Asher Loveland, 2-of-2 for 38 yards and 1 TD). RECEIVING – James McNiven, 3 catches for 52 yards; Carsten Schlenker, 1 catch for 48 yards and 1 TD; Matt Tempany, 2 catches for 44 yards; Brad Davidson, 1 catch for 19 yards and a TD; Chase Bassett, 1 catch for 17 yards and 1 TD. 

DEFENSIVE STANDOUTS – Walker led the team with 21 points (4 solo tackles, 5 assisted tackles, 1 tackle for loss, 1 pass break up and 1 fumble recovery), followed by McNiven with 16 points (6 solo tackles, 1 assisted tackle, 2 tackles for loss and 1 sack), Tempany with 12 points (5 solo tackles, 2 assisted tackles).