With 13 seniors to replace from 2020, eight of them being all-district selections, someone might look at the 2021 edition of the Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk football team and think there were a lot of questions about the season. The Hawks gave answers to those queries, emphatically on Friday, beating up on visiting West Burlington Notre Dame 55-13.

Things went Mid-Prairie’s way from the opening kick as West Burlington fumbled on their first play from scrimmage, which was recovered by Justice Jones at the 19 yard line. On the Golden Hawks first snap of 2021, Will Cavanagh went up top to Jackson Pennington for a touchdown pass making it 7-0 Mid-Prairie 20 seconds into the season. Things would continue to roll from there.

Mid-Prairie scored touchdowns on their first six possessions of the first half with Cavanagh finding paydirt on a five yard bootleg with seven to go in the first quarter to make it 14-0, Tyler Helmuth then scampered 22 yards for his first touchdown of the year to make it 21-0 still just seven minutes into the game. It was 27-0 Mid-Prairie still in the first quarter when Cavanagh connected with tight end Grady Gingerich for an 18 yard scoring strike. In the second quarter it was Braden Hartley’s turn to join the action with a 19 yard touchdown run and then Cavanagh again went to the air finding Cain Brown on a 51-yard touchdown throw to make it 41-0 and that’s where the score stood at half as Mid-Prairie saw their first drive end without points when the clock ran out going into the break with the Hawks on the seven. In the first half, the Golden Hawk defense was also terrific, holding West Burlington to negative total yardage on five of their seven possessions and surrendering just 10 total yards of offense to the Falcons.

Out of the locker room, Mid-Prairie marched it 70 yards on five plays, finishing with Helmuth’s second scoring run of the night to make it 48-0. The Falcons would break up the shut out when Travain Donaldson returned the ensuing kickoff 82 yards for a touchdown to make it 48-6. Each team would find the end zone once more from there with Braden Hartley supplying the Hawks score on a one yard touchdown dive and West Burlington quarterback Hayden Vandenburg reaching the end zone from 25 yards out in the game’s last five minutes. After the contest, Mid-Prairie head coach Pete Cavanagh broke down the performance on both sides of the ball. “We harped on turnovers, win turnover margin and our defensive line the first couple series was in the backfield, they force the fumble, and then decide to go play action. That play was actually called by my son, I wanted to run a different pass, he wanted to go play action and roll out and he made a great throw and Jack Pennington a great catch. It was good to get out to that good start. They were big up front so we tried to go with some tempo. I thought we did a good job with that. Our motto this year is ‘We is Greater than Me’. Against West Liberty in our scrimmage we had five guys catch a ball. Tonight we tried to spread it out again also. There are definitely some things we need to work on, sureing up edge blocking, but overall I thought our offense executed very well. Tyler Helmuth had a great first half at running back then Braden Hartley comes in and did an awesome job and Dylan Henry had some nice runs. We rode our offensive line a little bit because we wanted to give them a full game of action to gel.”

The Golden Hawks owned the stat column, posting 24 first downs to seven for the Falcons, putting up 441 total yards of offense, 258 on the ground and 183 through the air on 50 snaps. Mid-Prairie did not punt in the game. The Falcons finished with 100 yards of total offense, with 90 of that coming against Mid-Prairie’s reserves, only two total yards in the passing game. Individually, Mid-Prairie was led by Cavanagh with 232 yards of total offense and four total touchdowns. He was 10 of 11 through the air for 183 yards and three scores, while carrying the ball five times for 49 yards and another score. Cain Brown and Jack Pennington each caught three passes and a touchdown. Grady Gingerich caught a score. On the ground, Tyler Helmuth hit the century mark with 106 yards on 11 carries and a pair of touchdowns. Braden Hartley added 59 yards on eight carries and two scores. Justice Jones had four and a half tackles, three for loss. The Golden Hawk defense in total had nine tackles for loss in the game. The Hawks are now 1-0 on the year and will travel to No. 9 Sigourney-Keota this Friday. You can hear all of the rivalry action between the Hawks and Cobras in an area battle from the Snake Pit next week on AM 1380, FM 102.5 and KCIIradio.com, beginning with the Washington HyVee Pregame Show at 7p.m. and the Systems Unlimited Kickoff at 7:30.