Forest Lake's 27-21 victory over Eagan on Friday took root nearly two months ago, when the Rangers began the season with five straight victories.
"The trials and tribulations you have through the season — you win some games, you lose some games — matter the most," Forest Lake coach Brad Beeskow said. "We won more than we lost, and we felt good about that, but we didn't win them all going away. At the end of the day, bottom line is you have to get that win, and that's what our kids figured out how to do."
The game pitted two teams that hadn't won a playoff game in forever. Eagan (6-3) battled jitters early. The Wildcats turned the ball over three times in the first half, directly leading to 14 points for Forest Lake (7-2).
A fumble by Eagan's Landon Tonsager on the third play from scrimmage led to Forest Lake's first score, a weaving 35-yard run by Westin Hoyt.
After Forest Lake bumped the lead to 13-0, another fumble contributed to the most crucial play of the game, a 12-yard touchdown pass from Rangers quarterback Keagan Zeidler to Jake Johnson with 7 seconds left before halftime.
Replays appeared to show Johnson failed to get his foot down in bounds, but officials ruled the catch good and Forest Lake took a 20-0 lead into halftime.
"We were nervous, you could see that," Eagan coach Nick Johnson said.
Johnson admitted he was momentarily angry with his team's first-half performance but said that drained away quickly when he looked at his players at halftime.
"You could see how tight we were," he said. "We just needed to go out, play football like we had played and have fun. Football is supposed to be fun."
Forest Lake bumped the lead to 27-0 in the third quarter before Eagan, its stellar season slipping away in its first home playoff game since 2014, made a fourth-quarter rally, scoring 21 straight points, enough to make Forest Lake notice but not enough to concern Beeskow.
"It's just football, a game of momentum," he said. "I just figured our guys would keep playing, and that's what happened."
