Photos Courtesy of Jeff Yoder
Friday night the Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk football team took the final step of a long regular season journey, closing out an unbeaten district championship with a 42-7 win at Albia. They dominated the first quarter, setting the tone with three straight drives that started in Blue Demon territory, and ended in the endzone, set up by more than 100 return yards from Kaden Kos and Cash Brown. Hudson Ehrenfelt had seven and four yard scoring runs, and Brady Weber a seven yard touchdown sprint of his own, to lead 21-0 after one. The only points of the second quarter came on an Albia answer, a 10 play 64 yard drive, finished with a Luke Winn to Spencer Maddison 10 yard touchdown toss, to make it 21-7 Hawks going to the break.
After half, the Golden Hawk defense hit another level, giving up just 30 total yards in the final two quarters, while the offense found it’s stride again. An 11 play, 73 yard march moved Mid-Prairie back in front three scores, when Ehrenfelt got this third touchdown of the night, an 11 yard rush. The lead ballooned to 35-7 on Weber’s second scoring run of the night, from seven yards out, on the end of a four play 22 yard drive, to make it 42-7 and enact the running clock. The final touchdown of the night belonged to senior Tatem Telfer, his first of the season, on a three yard rush to finish a nine play, 33 yard march. The Golden Hawks of the game, Telfer and Conner Wiles joined the KCII locker room show to talk about their work on both sides of the ball and what it means to be district champions.
Wiles said, “We had to come out fast and physical. Have guys flying to the football. We made a lot of big plays, couple sacks and tackles for loss. We just pounded the ground game from the start. We came out in the second half and responded well. It feels great going into the playoffs knowing that we’re the one seed and undefeated in district.”
Telfer continued, “Our defensive line did a great job getting pressure and our linebackers flew to the ball and we did what we needed to do. First half everything was working, we were all doing our jobs and keying on our assignments. In the second half we really picked it up. We had a team meeting and said ‘this is what we’re going to do. We need to get back to it.’ Then it was ground and pound. (Scoring a touchdown) feels great! It’s the first touchdown I’ve had in a long time. It took like five tries, but we can check that off of this season’s list!”
The Golden Hawks won the total yards battle 272-114 including 204-43 on the ground. The Blue Demons had the only takeaway for the night, a Winn interception. Individually, Ehrenfelt led the Hawks with 154 all-purpose yards, 140 of that on the ground, on 29 carries with three rushing scores. Weber had 132 total yards, 68 through the air, on 10 of 17 throwing and 64 rushing, on nine carries and two touchdowns. Telfer added a rushing score to go with eight catches for 43 yards to lead the receivers. Wiles had six tackles to lead a Mid-Prairie defense, that finished with seven tackles for loss. The win is their fifth-in-a-row, and gives Mid-Prairie the outright 2A District 5 title at 5-0, moving them to 5-3 overall and gives them the one seed with a home game in the first round of the playoffs next week. Albia is 4-4 on the year after ending district 2-3, with a four seed in the playoffs.