MHSAA football finals: G.R. West Catholic nukes Negaunee, 59-14, for D-6 title

Grand Rapids West Catholic didn’t hold on to the ball for long Friday at Ford Field, but still came away with a resounding 59-14 victory over Negaunee in the Division 6 final to win its sixth Michigan high school football state championship in 10 years, and its first since 2017.

Big plays were the Falcons’ calling card all day — particularly in the third quarter where they opened up the game with a 31-point outburst — and their 59 points were the most ever scored in an MHSAA championship game.

The Falcons set the tone on their first play, from their own 28. Receiver Carter Perry got four or five steps on his cover man and quarterback Bernie Varnesdeel hit him with a pass near midfield. Perry continued 53 yards up the left sideline to give West Catholic a 7-0 lead only 14 seconds in.

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“I knew right before the game he was going to be wide open,” Varnesdeel said. “We’ve been working on it all week. He was the main option.”

Perry answered the call again to make it 14-0 in the second quarter. On a second-and-10 from the Negaunee 32, Perry took a short pass from Varnesdeel, deked one defender in the open field and another along the right sideline and then cut inside to cross the goal line.

Negaunee (13-1) erased that two-touchdown deficit on consecutive plays, though. On the final play of the first half, a 6-yard pass on fourth down from Ty Jacobson to Phil Nelson in the back right corner of the end zone capped a 14-play, 70-yard drive that consumed 5:27 of clock.

Negaunee got the ball back to open the second half and Nelson returned the kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown —the third-longest in MHSAA finals history — by clearing a seam through the initial wave of defenders and outrunning the kicker, tying the game and briefly prompting the “U.P. Power” chants.

But losing the lead only seemed to light the fire under West Catholic. The Falcons responded to Nelson’s kick return three plays later when Timmy Kloska scored the first of his four second-half touchdowns. He burst loose for a 62-yard run, hitting the hole up the middle and swinging out toward the left sideline, for a 21-14 lead.

“I just saw that kick return and it really fired me up,” Kloska said. “Our O-line got going, and the holes just started opening, and we just got going. It’s a great feeling because we’ve worked so hard.”

After forcing West Catholic (13-1) to punt, Negaunee scored on the first play of the next possession on a pass to Andrew McAlary on an out pattern for a 68-yard touchdown.

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“Kind of our M.O. this year has been the third quarters, coming out with our hair on fire and taking over games, and that’s what we did today,” West Catholic coach Landon Grove said. “It’s a testament to our defensive staff making those adjustments that we needed to make, and then our kids bought into those adjustments, and just believing in the process, never wavering and trusting what got us here.”

After adding a 31-yard field goal by Carson Beekman, West Catholic pinned Negaunee deep in its own end, and the Miners coughed up the ball on the 16. The Falcons struck quickly again, with Kloska running the ball in on the first play to build a 38-14 lead.

West Catholic added one more score before the quarter was out, on a 3-yard Kloska run. While it was the shortest scoring play for the Falcons, it was set up by a 44-yard pass from Varnesdeel to McAlary, who was well ahead of his defender but laid out to catch the ball and ended up on the ground at the Miners’ 8-yard line.

Kloska (241 rushing yards) added his fourth touchdown with 8:45 to play, on a 13-yard-rush. That finished off a seven-play, 47-yard drive which used 3:15 of clock — the longest-lasting drive for the Falcons.

Elliot Zainea’s 26-yard touchdown run with 4:13 remaining gave the Falcons the title-game scoring record, surpassing the 56 points scored by Flint Powers (Division 5) and Saginaw Nouvel (Division 7), both in 2011.

“We ran out of gas,” Negaunee coach Paul Jacobson said. “I thought we played toe-to-toe with them in the first half. Phil had a great return to start the second half, but then we woke the sleeping giant, and they rolled that second half on us.”

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MHSAA football finals: G.R. West Catholic nukes Negaunee, 59-14, in D-6