Harrison football rolls to 2-0 start with win over White Cloud

 By BEN MURPHY

Cleaver Sports Writer

It wasn’t perfect, but it was another lopsided win for the Harrison football team on Thursday. The Hornets were playing at White Cloud in non-league action, and they racked up a 44-0 victory, despite having some miscues along the way. This gives the Hornets a 2-0 start to the season for the third year in a row.

“We won, 44-0, but I just didn’t think we played as well as we could have,” head coach Jamie Lipovsky said. “I thought it was a good win, I thought we didn’t play particularly the best, but you have to credit White Cloud, at times they did a good job of stopping what we wanted to do. Now it is time to get better for the next one.”

The Hornets put up two scores in the first quarter, allowing them to claim a 16-0 advantage after one. By the half that ballooned to 38-0 and it was 44-0 entering the fourth.

“I think some positives are that the kids did play for four quarters, just with it being the second game of the year, we expected less mistakes and every play had one or two guys that did things wrong, and we just have to improve on that,” Lipovsky said.

The Hornets had 413 yards of total offense in the game, while holding White Cloud to just 66.

They had Aiden Brewer run for 104 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries and Matt Latunski was three-of-eight passing for 78 yards and one touchdown. Collin Dennis had one reception for a 61-yard touchdown, Ray Cosgrove and Nyxon Rhodes had one reception each for nine and eight yards respectively and Latunski also ran for 67 yards and a touchdown on four attempts. Dennis rushed five times for 46 yards and two scores; Rhodes ran it eight times for 43 yards and a touchdown and Daniel Seefeld rushed three times for 26 yards. Cosgrove and Clayten Austin, both ran it four times each, getting 25 and 20 yards each on the ground.

For the Hornet defense, Alex Jansen had 10 tackles and an impressive five sacks. Parker Latunski had five tackles and two sacks, Austin added four tackles and two sacks, Brewer also took down four and James Sample tracked down three tackles.

Harrison (2-0 overall) hosts Pinconning (1-1) on Friday, for what will be their first Jack Pine Conference game of the season. The Spartans are coming off a 26-0 victory over Flint Southwestern last week.

“We are starting off the conference now, all the games matter, but this one matters more because with league play, if we want any shot of staying in the bout, to be able to win the conference, we have to win this first game, so we have to come out strong,” Lipovsky said. “Pinconning is a good team, they are well-coached, a brand new coach (Mike LeGrow) this year, he’s coached in lots of places, so he understands the game of football, so we have to execute and that’s been the focus this whole week, to get better every single day.”