The Hastings Raiders football team had a rollercoaster of eight days. They had a close loss to Robbinsdale Cooper on Friday, a huge, dominating win to start the section tournament on Tuesday and a …
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The Hastings Raiders football team had a rollercoaster of eight days. They had a close loss to Robbinsdale Cooper on Friday, a huge, dominating win to start the section tournament on Tuesday and a season ending close loss to conference rival St. Thomas Academy on Saturday to end the Raiders season.
For the first Section 3AAAAA tournament game on Oct. 22 against Bloomington Jefferson, the Raiders played the most complete game of their season. All three aspects of the game worked well for Hastings, and they dominated the Jaguars 35-0. That led to a conference rematch against St. Thomas Academy (STA) on Oct. 26. Hastings had every opportunity to dethrone the reigning section champions, but they fell short losing 28-14.
Bloomington Jefferson
Hastings dominated this game from the start. On the first drive of the game, Lucas Poellinger burst through the Jefferson line knocking the ball out of the running backs’ hands and recovered the ball to put the Raiders first drive in great position from the 22. Four plays later and with only 3:26 off the game clock, Hastings was up for good 7-0.
Jefferson was able to move the ball down the field on their next drive, but a Kyan Esterby interception at the Raider seven-yard line put an end to that quickly. The Raiders moved the ball six yards on two plays and play three saw Zach Shatek scamper 87 yards for the second Hastings touchdown.
Hastings had six possessions in the first half, three of the six resulted in a touchdown with the third score coming from a Lukas Foss QB keeper at the one-yard line. The first half was difficult for the Jaguars who, despite very good field position, could not get out of their own way. Four first half turnovers and two punts by Jefferson sealed their fate very early.
The second half scoring drives for Hastings were capped off by a 65-yard touchdown run by Shatek and a 22-yard reception by Marlowe Strain and Hastings defeated the Jaguars 35-0.
Offensively, Hastings had 350 total yards on 47 plays. Lukas Foss tossed the ball six times completing two passes for 51 yards and one touchdown. He also ran for ten yards and one touchdown. Matt Foss was responsible for the other 29 yards receiving. On the ground, Hastings was all business with Zach Shatek leading the way with 20 carries for 239 yards and three touchdowns. Grant Birken carried twice for 14 yards, Matt Foss had one carry for 24 yards and Lane Hoffman had eight carries for 22 yards.
Defensively, the Raiders held Jefferson to 136 yards of offense on 46 plays while creating five total turnovers. Esterby, Landon Johnson and Luke Kendall each had an interception. Poellinger started things with the fumble recovery and Chase Sampson completed the game with his first ever varsity fumble recovery. When Sampson emerged from the pile with the ball, the student section and the entire sideline lost their minds cheering for him.
After the game, Shatek could not be prouder of the total team effort.
“Our run game was our lineman getting great pushes up front. Everyone was assignment sound. We had a speech from our coach last night about pulling the rope, and everyone was holding their end of the rope, just for each other. We played as a great team, and hope it carries on to the next game,” he said.
“Dude, it was a dog fight the whole night,” added lineman Alton Majetich. “I love every one of these boys. They played their hearts out for us seniors and all we can do is bring it to the next game. We are all one big family, we need to stay a family and not let anyone bring us down. We are all capable. We are going to try to take this W to St. Thomas.”
Lukas Foss talked about what they would need to do to beat St. Thomas. “The last time we played them, we had a great passing game. I'm looking forward to doing that to them all over again. I'm also looking forward to our passing game opening up opportunities in the run game for us as well.”
Head Coach Dana Strain echoed some of Foss’ thoughts.
“We’ve just got to play well, and we got to make sure we play well early and kind of give ourselves a chance to settle into it. Do the same things that we did tonight, we've got to be opportunistic on defense and create some turnovers. That's been our M.O. when we've been good on defense this year, it's been getting turnovers. Offensively, we’ve got to find some explosive plays. We got that last time against them in the passing game, but we didn't find a way to get it done in the run game. We're going to need to crease them a couple times, at least, to generate some of those big plays and then we've got to be much better on special teams. The first go around with St. Thomas, we were not good against their special teams’ units, so we got to show that up,” explained Strain.
St. Thomas
The trip to Mendota Heights was much less fruitful than just a few days prior. STA scored on their first possession to take an early lead. Hastings had several early opportunities with excellent starting field position, but they were unable to convert until their fifth possession when Lukas Foss connected with Strain for an 8-yard touchdown.
STA went up 21-7 and Hastings clawed back to make it 21-14. Unfortunately for Hastings, the defense had been beaten up by the Cadets ground game all game long and the last quarter of the game STA was running all over the Raiders. Ultimately, they put the game away with 4:35 remaining, they made the score 28-14 ending the Raiders season.
The most shocking stat for this game was that Hastings had five additional opportunities in the red zone and they came away with zero points in those five trips.
Hastings ran 57 plays for 312 yards and STA had 56 plays for 373 yards. Foss was 16-for-25 passing with one touchdown and 170 yards. Shatek rushed 23 times for 122 yards and a touchdown. Hastings did create three turnovers, Carter Lundstrom recovered one fumble and Hunter Hoff recovered two.
The Raiders finish the season 4-6 overall, 2-3 in the section and 2-2 in the conference.