Local teams look to move to 3-0

Come Saturday morning, the high school football season will already by a third of the way over. At least for the regular season’s nine games.

A couple of local teams are looking to win their third game of the season already. It’s probably still too early to talk playoffs (it is), but starting the season with a 3-0 mark would certainly help shift the focus to late season football in the fall.

Burr Oak traveled to Athens and Decatur traveled to White Pigeon on Thursday. Obviously, both of those games were not able to be previewed here in this story, which runs on Friday. I’m sure you’ve heard the talk about lack of officials and all that, here’s two games that are clearly impacted by the lack of officials.

Moving along, both Bronson and Colon are the two local teams that are trying to get to 3-0 on the season.

Bellevue at Colon

Colon is pretty accustomed to starting the season with wins. The Magi have won their opening three games in three of the last four seasons. The one year they didn’t was the COVID 2020 campaign.

On Friday, Colon will play its opening home game of the season.

“It’s nice to get on our own field, especially when you have the best grass in the state,” Colon coach Robbie Hattan said. “We have the best grass field in Michigan and it’s going to be nice to get out there and play.”

Colon will have face panting and bouncy houses on location prior to Friday’s game as they welcome in families for the contest.

Simon Vinson and Justin Wickey have already hooked up for 16 catches so far this season, covering 327 yards (20+ yards per catch) with eight touchdowns. Expect that number to increase here as Bellevue has struggled to stop opposing offenses from scoring.

The Broncos are 0-2 and have been out-scored 72-24 by Litchfield and Climax-Scotts.

“Climax is a good football team and they (Bellevue) played a hungry Litchfield team as well,” Hattan said. “Bellevue is gonna win some games this year, but they are definitely younger than they’ve been in the past. They’re still trying to figure out what their identity is as a team.”

The Magi are also aiming to not look ahead to next week’s game at Adrian Lenawee Christian. The Cougars have won two straight state championships and have piled up 26 consecutive wins.

“We know we gotta get better each week. We have some dogs coming up on our schedule, so we want to improve every week,” Hattan said. “We need to focus on who is in front of us. We won’t be looking ahead, the team we play this week is the team we are focused on.”

Michigan Center at Bronson

Bronson has not started a season with a 3-0 record since 2009. This year’s Vikings have already taken out Prairie Heights and Springport, out-scoring their two opponents 70-19 in those two games.

The game with Michigan Center on Friday will be the second non-conference game for Bronson so far this year. They’ll also play the crossover game at the end of the season against a non-Big 8 opponent.

Michigan Center comes into Friday’s game with an 0-2 mark. The Cardinals have lost to Tecumseh, which averages 54 points per game, and Hanover-Horton, which opened the season with a loss to Hudson. Michigan Center scored a ton of points last season with 418 in 13 games (32+ per game), but this year they have struggled to score with only 20 points on the year.

Michigan Center reached the Division 6 state semifinals last year and won 11 games.

Plainwell at Sturgis

The Sturgis football team is 1-1. The Trojans are looking to rebound from a loss last week at Vicksburg, a 42-7 defeat to the Bulldogs on their fancy new turf.

Sturgis will look to regain some of the momentum it created after an opening week win over Niles, 15-0, at home. Plainwell, though, is an offensive firepower apparently.

The blue and white Trojans have won both games so far this season, beating Otsego 21-7 and then clobbering Coldwater 49-0 last week. Sturgis has struggled to move the football consistently in its two games to date this year, the Trojans have reached 218 yards in the win over Niles and 226 last week against Vicksburg.

Jacob Thompson has been the focal point of the Sturgis offense. He’s rushed for 147 and 162 yards in the two Trojan games and will need to have a big impact in this one.

Lawton at Constantine

Constantine is stinging after relinquishing a 20-0 lead at Hudson last week, a game they lost 22-20. The Falcons have another tough game here as they host Lawton, a team that reached the Division 7 state finals last year and won 13 games. The 14-10 loss to Pewamo-Westphalia in the state championship game was the only loss for the Blue Devils a season ago.

This year, Lawton has beat up on Benton Harbor and Decatur. Each of those opponents scored 12 points against Lawton.

Three Rivers at Otsego

Three Rivers has been a solid offensive team so far this season. The Wildcats have scored 62 points in two games, including 30 last week as they pushed Edwardsburg for four quarters.

Caleb Quake has been a huge impact on the offense. The QB has rushed for 255 yards and tossed for 367 yards in two combined games with six touchdowns.

Otsego has dropped both of its games this season. The Bulldogs have dropped games to Plainwell (21-7) and Paw Paw (33-27).

Centreville at Sand Creek

Centreville did not score an offensive point last week against Schoolcraft in a 22-2 loss. The Bulldogs are looking to work past that this week with a road trip to Sand Creek.

The Bulldogs hang their hats on playing good defense, but they will want to improve that this week. So far this season they’ve been out-scored 36-22. Sand Creek has not had a good season to date, the Aggies beat Quincy 8-0 but dropped a 27-0 decision to Blissfield last week.

Bridgman at Mendon

Mendon beat up on Wyoming-Lee last week, 76-12. It helped them get back on track after an opening season loss at Martin in a game the Hornets felt they could win.

Now they take on a Bridgman team that has almost twice the enrollment. The Bees have stung both Maple Valley and New Buffalo to open the season at 2-0, out-scoring those opponents 114-18.

Bridgman did not lose a single game last year, going 10-0. The school’s enrollment made them too big for the 8-player playoffs, which will happen again this year.

Mendon has several winnable games the remainder of the schedule. If the Hornets can win this game, it will certainly set them up for a nice winning streak.

Martin at Marcellus

Martin has clipped both of its opponents this season, beating Mendon 30-28 and Gobles 50-6. The Clippers are supposed to be one of the better 8-player teams on this side of the state this season and the Wildcats will host them on Friday night.

Marcellus won last week over Fennville, beating up on the Blackhawks 44-18.

Athletes of the week

Congratulations go out to Jacob Thompson of Sturgis and Caleb Quake of Three Rivers.

They were each voted as the football athlete of the week to open the season. Thompson won the first week, Quake won this past week.

This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: Local teams look to move to 3-0