The Star Tribune is celebrating 50 years of high school football state tournaments one day at a time for 50 days.
Year: 2009
"We have guys who make plays, and it got better and better and better. It's different guys at different times. It was great." — Stephen-Argyle coach Mark Kroulik
New London-Spicer senior lineman Jon Haverly made plans for his championship medal.
"I'm not going to take this off for … four or five months," Haverly said to his teammates after the Wildcats scored 22 fourth-quarter points to rally for a 28-21 victory over Glencoe-Silver Lake for the Class 3A title. It's the only championship for the central Minnesota communities.
Quick-footed junior quarterback Jayme Moten connected on 14 of 17 passes (a Prep Bowl record .824 completion percentage) for 242 yards and three touchdowns, all coming in the fourth quarter.
The Wildcats switched to a spread offense in the fourth quarter, and Moten completed all 12 of his passes in the quarter. He directed New London-Spicer on a nine-play, 67-yard drive for the winning touchdown. He threw a 4-yard bullet to Aaron Jenny, who had six defenders within arm's reach, for the go-ahead score with just over three minutes remaining.
"Jayme played phenomenal," Wildcats coach Dan Essler said. "We have a lot of tremendous athletes running around out there, and it's tough to cover them all."
In other finals:
- Mark Alt threw two touchdown passes — one on third down and another on fourth down — and booted a field goal to cement his place in Cretin-Derham Hall lore with a 16-5 victory over Eden Prairie in Class 6A.
"I was trying to just play my game," said Alt, who suffered a broken collarbone in the game. "Not worry about the fans, not worry about anything else. It worked. This is the best feeling I've ever had in my life,"
- Stephen-Argyle set six Prep Bowl records in defeating Nicollet 37-22 for the Nine-Man title, and it all started on the ground. The Storm established records for rushing attempts (88), rushing yards (569) and rushing first downs (33). They finished with 616 yards of offense on 94 plays, 34 of them going for first downs, all Prep Bowl records, too.
"We're pretty happy with that," Storm coach Mark Kroulik said.
State championship games
Class 5A: Cretin-Derham Hall 16, Eden Prairie 5
Class 4A: Totino-Grace 45, Sartell-St. Stephen 7
Class 3A: New London-Spicer 28, Glencoe-Silver Lake 21
Class 2A: Waterville-Elysian-Morristown 33, Moose Lake-Willow River 22
Class 1A: Minneota 42, Adrian 21
Nine-Man: Stephen-Argyle 37, Nicollet 22
