Staff photo by Steve Muscatello Nicollet’s Riley Mans tries to break up a pass during the first quarter against Renville County West in the Section 2, 9-man championship game Thursday in Waconia.

WACONIA — Despite striking first in Thursday night’s Section 2, 9-man football championship game, No-3 seeded Nicollet was unable to capitalize enough on scoring opportunities and fell 28-14 to top-seeded Renville County West at Waconia High School.

“We just didn’t get our breaks,” Nicollet head coach Tom Murphy said. “We came out with something new, got it going, got a score, missed the extra point — would have been nice to be up 8-0. Yeah, we just didn’t capitalize on some breaks that we got and if you would’ve said it’s going to be 8-6 at half, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it.’ We just didn’t make as many plays as they did.”

After scoring first in the opening quarter, the Raiders surrendered 14 unanswered points and trailed 14-6 after a 49-yard TD pass from Jaguars quarterback Jack Howard to Connor Aaiderks with 9:23 left in the third quarter. Needing a momentum swing, Riley Mans picked off Howard at the RCW 25-yard line, putting the Raiders in great position to score midway through the third quarter.

Two plays later, however, Brandon Hoberg got a pick six down the right sideline to put RCW up 21-6.

Nicollet was able to respond on its next drive, getting a big 30-yard reception from Shane Stevenson near the goal line before quarterback Jon Mans scored on a 1-yard keeper with an extra push from his blockers. A 2-point conversion run by Jon Mans then had Nicollet down 21-14.

But after recovering a short kick at their own 47-yard line, the Jaguars stormed down the field and went up 28-14 after a 22-yard TD pass to Hoberg and an extra-point kick.

With time ticking away late in the fourth quarter, the Raiders got a big 34-yard pass to Riley Hulke, setting the Raiders up at the RCW 35. A few plays later, though, RCW got its third interception of the night on a tipped ball in the end zone that was collected by Riley Ashburn.

From there out, Nicollet was forced to use its final two timeouts as RCW was able to break off a couple of first-down runs and run the clock down before taking a knee on the final play for the win.

While the loss hurt and was a tough way to end a strong 9-2 season for the Raiders, Murphy said that the kids coming back next year need to remember it and use it as fuel.

“They’ve just got to realize that if they don’t like the feeling of what this is, they’ve got to decide if they’re going to put in the work,” he said. “A lot of our kids did put in a lot of work, we didn’t get this far without putting in effort. But I told the kids after, that in high school football, you seldom end the season with a win unless you’re at the end, so it’s hard. The thing is, you’ll never regret putting the work in and putting the time in. If we’re upset afterwords and we didn’t put in the work, I can’t feel a lot of pity, but I can feel for these kids because of the work that they put in.”

The Raiders showed some early promise on their first drive of the game that featured several first-down keepers by Jon Mans. But that drive stalled out near the goal line after RCW was able to force an incompletion in the back of the end zone on fourth-and-goal from the RCW 3.

While the Raiders were unable to capitalize on that drive and their second drive, linebacker Nathan Duis picked off an RCW pass up the middle near the RCW 15-yard line to set the Raiders up in the red zone with minutes left in the first quarter. The Raiders then turned that into a 6-0 lead after a two-play drive ended with a 10-yard touchdown pass from Mans to Hulke in the center of the end zone.

Duis ended the game with two interceptions for the Nicollet defense.

The Jaguars took the lead with 4:52 left in the half after Jaden Kolker was able to stretch his arm across the goal line for a 2-yard TD run. A 2-point conversion pitch on a fake kick was fumbled but recovered in the end zone by Zac Rice for an 8-6 Jaguars lead, which would be the score at the half.