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Thursday, September 1, 2011Page 1-B

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SKYLINE FOOTBALL COMMEMORATIVE EDITION

Won for one

Photos by Burrill Strong/ HERITAGE MEDIA

The Skyline varsity football team celebrates the first win in program history last Friday night. Skyline defeated Hartland 28-25 at Eastern Michigan University.

Skyline gets

first varisty winBy Terry JacobyA2 Journal

The win seemed to be fading asquickly as the sun. But then againfirsts never come easy, now dothey?After building a commanding 28-3lead early in the third quarter, theSkyline Eagles looked to be wellon their way to an impressive anddominating vic-tory over Hartlandin the Big DayPrep Showdown atEastern MichiganUniversity on

Friday. The Carolina blue Eaglesappeared to be well on their way totheir first varsity victory in schoolhistory.But the other Eagles dressed asWolverines began to slowly chipaway.With the score 28-17 and 7:10 to playin the game, Hartland recoveredan onside kick. And with 6:09 left,Hartlands Travis Spears ran into theend zone to make it a one possessiongame. But the score was called backbecause of a holding penalty. Onthe very next play, Skylines TheronWilson remember that name

intercepted a pass in the end zoneto end the scoring threat with 5:56 toplay.

Still, Hartland kept coming.Skyline botched a punt again set-ting up Hartland deep in Skylineterritory. Stephen Milarch scored ona quarterback sneak from the 2-yardline and the Eagles converted thetwo-point conversion to make it 28-25with 2:31 to play.The Skyline offense was able to movethe ball and run the clock down to 44seconds before punting.

Still, Hartland keptcoming.Skyline had 44 sec-onds to go 89 yards.Impossible, right?The first play was

a bomb to midfield with 37 secondsleft. The next play was a pass to the29-yard line with 27 seconds left.Hartland then completed a pass tothe 16-yard line with 3 seconds left.Hartland rushed out the field-goalunit and tried a 33-yard line field goalthat sailed just wide left.Finally, Hartland stopped coming.And the Skyline Eagles had their his-toric win in dramatic fashion.

It was exciting, Skyline coachRod Jones said. Hartland is a goodteam and they have some real hart.We got them down early and theybattled back.

Jones said he thought his teamcame out too fired up, which led tothe breakdowns later in the game.

Wewere soexcited,he said. Ithink we wereso excited we came out andburned ourselves out in the firsthalf. Then we started to have somemental errors, but Ill work on thatpart. Ill get them in better shape.

The coach said that even when

things started to get rough, henever gave up on his team.I just told (his team) to be

patient, he said. This is our firstwin as a varsity team, so you haveto fight through those tough times.That really tested our mettle. Andthats what we need. We need tobe tested early so we can be evenbetter next week.Skyline took a 7-0 lead on a75-yard touchdown pass fromAndrew Copp to Jordan Woodson the Eagles second posses-sion. Woods, the highly prizedsenior wideout, beat doublecoverage along the right sidelineand Copp dropped a perfect pass

Skyline proves makinghistory doesnt come easy

With 9:59left inthethirdquarter,

Skyline was lead-ing Hartland 28-3in the Big Day PrepShowdown onFriday at EasternMichigansRynearson

Stadium. It wastough not to thinkback to the Eaglesinaugural season.

Lets see howbest to describelast year. Rough.Lets just keep it at that.

And really what else would

one expect from afirst-year football pro-gram with no seniorson the roster. Thelast time these twoteams met, Hartlandpounded the new kidson the block 64-26. TheAnn Arbor SkylineEagles would lose allnine games and inseven of those losses,

they would allow 40 ormore points.

Now their was someimprovement. Afterallowing more than60 points in three oftheir first four games,

the defense tightened up anddidnt allow another team over

60 the rest of the season.See what I mean. It was

rough. Even Bill OReillycouldnt spin last year.So when the Eagles went up25 points the Skyline faithfulcouldnt help but smile andcheer and clap and carry onlike a group of kids waiting forthe ice cream truck to turn thecorner. This was sweet. Andthey were going to enjoy every

second of it.Unfortunately, Hartland

wasnt ready to bow and surren-der no matter what the score-board said. You could call themHEARTland because this teamshowed plenty of heart anddetermination in a dramaticsecond half comeback that

endedwiththe clockrunningout and thepotentialtying field goalsailing wideleft.

This is nota game aboutnumbers. Its morea game about emo-tions. It didntmatter that one

HAVING

A BALL

TERRY

JACOBY

PLEASE SEE WON/2-B

PLEASE SEE

HISTORY/2-B

Pboto by Burrill Strong/A2

JOURNAL

Skylines Drew Grahamcelebrates Skylinesfirst varsity win.