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St. Paul
wins thriller over Dufur
Newberg
tames feisty Westview
Tigers
boys finish fifth, girls sixth at Gresham meet
Quiet Tigers dropped 5-0 |
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| B. Scott
Anderson Sports Blog |
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With win, NHS heads to Tigard |
By
B. Scott Anderson, Newberg Graphic reporter
E-mail Scott at
banderson@eaglenewspapers.com
|
The road in the
Pac-9 Conference won’t get any easier for the Newberg High School
football team.
Newberg,
which collected its first Pac-9 Conference win with its best
performance of the season in a 21-7 home win over Forest Grove, will
travel Friday to Tigard for a 7 p.m. contest. Tigard, a perennially
strong program, suffered a 20-18 loss to No. 4 Barlow last week and
a 21-14 loss to No. 3 Tualatin the week before. Tigard was ranked in
the top-10 prior to the losses, but has since dropped out.
NHS coach Eric Carlson said for his team, which gained 313 yards of
offense and limited the Vikings to 199, it has to do the simple
things.
“We have to do everything right,” he said. “We have to tackle, we
have to defend, we have to move the ball, but we have to worry more
about us rather than Tigard. We have to do the things we’re supposed
to do, like hang on to the ball and have no penalties.”
Basically, the Tigers will have to do all the things they did
against Forest Grove — create turnovers and capitalize on them and
don’t give up big plays. But it took the Tigers a half to do that
Friday. With the game tied 7-7 at halftime, it was a familiar
feeling to the Tigers. They were in a scoreless deadlock with
Silverton the week before, only to see the Foxes score three
touchdowns in the third quarter and walk away with a 28-7 win.
But this time, it was Newberg’s opportunity to come out with a
game-changing third quarter. Early in the third, NHS quarterback
Levi Fletcher hit junior wide receiver Matt Johnson for a 30-yard
pass to put the Tigers at the Forest Grove 35. Two plays later,
senior running back Nick Skaale ran 26 yards for the go-ahead score
with 10:14 left in the third.
On the following Forest Grove drive, Viking quarterback Brooks
Baumgartner’s pass was intercepted by Johnson at the Newberg 39. On
the first play of the drive, Skaale ran it up the middle and then
cut outside to the right and scored a 61-yard touchdown with 8:25
left.
“I told them at halftime that we had been here before,” Carlson
said. “It was the same deal last week and I told them that we need
to learn from that. The good thing was that we were receiving the
kickoff and we went right down and scored.”
Skaale, who rushed for 136 yards on 12 carries and scored two
touchdowns, came into the game sick, but had his best game of the
season. He said the third quarter was key for the Tigers.
“Since we’ve been tied basically in all of our games at halftime,
we knew had to come out and step it up and play with our hearts,” he
said. “We knew we had to take it from the start and drive downfield
and get some touchdowns early.”
Johnson, in first game of the season for the Tigers, caught two
passes for 56 yards and intercepted two passes on defense.
“He is going to help us greatly and has helped us greatly,” Skaale
said. “It was his first game and he had an outstanding game. He’s
going to help us out a lot this year.”
The addition of Johnson, particularly on offense, helped to spread
out the Forest Grove defense. With junior Drew Steindl, the Tigers
had two who could make plays after catching the ball.
“It really helped having (Johnson) there and he caught some big
passes and Steindl was right there which makes it a little bit
harder to stop us,” Carlson said.
Both Skaale and Carlson pointed to the week of practice as to why
the Tigers seemed to play so well after it had seven turnovers in
the loss to Silverton.
“We practiced really hard this week,” Skaale said. “The coaches
pushed us and it was good for us because it prepared us.”
The hard practices, particularly on Tuesday and Wednesday, were a
necessity, Carlson said.
“We hit, we tackled and really got after it and I think it really
helped,” he said. “We just looked really different. We just seemed
to be better. I don’t know how to explain it. Everyone just seemed
sharper.
“We knew we needed to toughen them up a little bit. There’s always
kind of a fine line between hitting a lot in practice and getting
guys hurt when we’re already thin anyway. But sometimes, you’ve just
got to say we’re going to get blown out and get tackling. We had to
take the chance and we’re going to have to keep doing that.”
Newberg will have to keep taking chances against Tigard and Skaale
knows it.
“It’s going to be another hard week of practice (this week),” he
said. “That’s all it’s going to be.”
Notes: Against Forest Grove, Newberg was without three of its
starting defensive backs — Tyler Brown (concussion), Nathan Etzel
(back injury) and Nolan Tinney (concussion). All may return Friday
against Tigard. |
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From Oct. 5, 2005, Newberg Graphic
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