It was a back and forth affair Friday night in Riverside with the visiting Wilton Beavers topping the Highland Huskies 36-30 in the 2020 football opener for both teams. Highland held a 12-6 lead at the end of the first and increased that advantage to 30-22 at the halftime break. Wilton put together a pair of scores in the third quarter to take the lead at 36-30 and both team’s defenses locked in the rest of the night without allowing anymore points. Highland head coach Scott Morel talked about the key junctures of the contest. “At half, we talked about just continuing what we had been doing. We made some other adjustments defensively but things didn’t work out the way we wanted. We had some really big offensive plays. We’re pretty explosive. Connor Grinstead did a great job with his reads especially on the last drive and broke off some big runs. We also had some big runs from Owen Donovan and hit a pass to get us down to the nine. Three plays later we were down to the two. Then on the very last play of the game we had an errant snap and that ended it. We always say the little things matter to our games, and they do. Really we are looking at getting back to our fundamentals. We talked to the guys about it Friday night and they agreed we still need to get better at the little things.”

The Huskies ground game was impressive with a pair of backs going over the century mark led by junior Connor Grinstead with 15 carries for 183 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Grinstead electrified the home crowd with an incredible 90 yard gallop for six. Owen Donovan finished with 18 carries for 130 yards and two more touchdowns. He also had a highlight reel 63 yard scoring run for this longest of the night. Grinstead led the Highland defense with nine tackles on the night, eight of those were solo stops. Luke Miller finished with a big night defensively recording a fumble recovery and an interception. With the loss, Highland falls to 0-1 on the year and will travel to Wapello on Friday.