Cooper, Cardinals spoil MVL Homecoming
NEW ULM –Redwood Valley’s Lane Cooper scored three touchdowns — two coming in a 21-point second half — as the Cardinals downed Minnesota Valley Lutheran 27-12 Friday night in a South District, Central-Silver Subdistrict football game at Johnson Field.
Cooper scored on runs of 62, 18 and 34 yards, with his 34-yard scoring run with two minutes left in the game sealing MVL’s fate.
Ethan Louwagie added a 1-yard score for Redwood Valley.
Kaden Peterson hooked up twice with wide receiver Brennan Bendix on scoring strikes of 15 and 14 yards.
While Cooper did the bulk of the damage to the Chargers, MVL head coach Jim Buboltz felt that his team let first half scoring chances go by the wayside.
“We were inside their 20-yard line four times in the first half and just scored once,” Buboltz said, as his team also failed to score twice in the second half when inside the 25-yard line. “And those are times when we have to capitalize on.”
Redwood Valley took advantage of a Ryder Crawford interception of a Peterson pass to set the stage for a Cooper 62-yard run three plays after the pick for a 6-0 lead with five minutes left in the first quarter.
The Chargers defense gave them two chances to score in the second quarter, but in both cases, Redwood Valley’s defense held.
Ethan Schauland blocked a Cardinals punt and gave the Chargers the ball on the Redwood Valley 28 yard line.
But the Cardinals stiffened and stopped MVL on a fourth-and-five from the 20-yard line.
Schauland again came up with a big play when he stepped in front of an Ethan Louwagie pass and giving the Chargers the ball on Redwood Valley’s 25-yard line.
The MVL offense moved down to the Cardinals’ 12-yard line for a first down.
But four plays resulted with the drive ending on the 4-yard line.
The Chargers knotted up the game at 6-6 late in the first half when Bendix caught a 15-yard touchdown pass with eight seconds left in the first half.
“We could have scored twice — we have to do a better job of getting the ball in the end zone when we get down there,” Buboltz said “The effort is there.”
But any momentum that the Chargers had going into the second half with that late score was erased in the third and early fourth quarters by the Cardinals’ offense.
Redwood Valley took the opening kick-off of the third quarter and pieced together an eight-play, 75-yard drive that was capped by a 1-yard run from Louwagie for a 13-6 lead.
MVL’s offense sputtered following the Cardinals scoring drive and the Redwood Valley offense used an 1- play, 80-yard scoring drive with Cooper scoring on an 18-yard run for a 20-6 lead.
In the third quarter and early part of the fourth quarter, Redwood Valley ran 20 plays to three for the Chargers.
“They really came out with the idea that they were going to run the ball,” Buboltz said. “They found something there and we never came back from that. But this is a team that likes to air it out a lot, so we made them run it and they were better than us tonight.”
MVL mounted its longest drive of the game after Copper’s run when they went 12 plays and ate up 50 yards.
But again the MVL drive stalled on the Redwood Valley 14-yard line.
MVL got into the end zone with 4:43 left in the game when the duo of Peterson and Bendix hooked up again, this time from 14 yards.
“They kept us alive at different times,” Buboltz said about Peterson and Bendix. “There is no doubt about that. I thought that we ran the ball well at times — we have to stick with that”
Cooper’s 34-yard touchdown run for Redwood Valley made it a 27-12 final.