Tigers end regular season with win, play-off game Thursday

North Central lost a 74-22 Lake Region Conference high school football outcome to Ipswich at Ipswich last Friday.

What happened was that the hosts would get ahead 38-0 after a quarter without ever needing to punt. But both teams scored 22 points in the second quarter and the Tigers' briefly led 52-0 earlier in the second stanza thanks to a 55-yard TD breakaway by Tyler Hettich plus a Max Kulesa PAT run. And a Colby Sylte fumble recovery TD run of 45 yards was next on Ipswich's agenda.

But the visitors from North Central would eventually manufacture three late second-quarter touchdowns to narrow their deficit to 60-22 at halftime. Landon Wolf got them on the board with his short TD run but the conversion play was no good. Next would be Cole Bukaske's TD carry of three yards. The Wolf's PAT run was successful. An Ipswich fumble had led to that Thunder scoring opportunity. The hosts would then answer with a TD drive of their own - Kyle Hettich's 45-yard scamper to paydirt with a successful PAT carry by Casey Geditz. That left very little time on the scoreboard but enough time for a Thunder touchdown pass of 82 yards from Wolf to Bukaske and a Buechler PAT run.

The third-quarter action then featured two Tiger scoring opportunities - a three-yard TD pass from Ian Beyers to Tyler Hettich, capped by a Beyers PAT pass to Carter Geditz and Max Kulesa's 20-yard TD carry that ended the game due to the mercy rule.

What capped Ipswich's first-quarter scoring drives? Beyers passed to Trevor Heinz from five yards out with a successful Beyers conversion run. Next would be an eight-yard TD carry by Tyler Hettich with Beyers again adding a conversion run. And Beyers found Chet Peterson with a 51-yard TD aerial and Beyers also added a conversion pass to Darrel Yost. Then Tyler Hettich had back to back eight-yard scoring runs with the second one featuring a Beyers to Sylte conversion pass.

So when all was said and done Ipswich would score 10 touchdowns; the Thunder, three!

Beyers ended up with two new Ipswich School passing records with 23 season TD passes of which the old record was 22 passes by Taylor Weigel and also passing yards in a season of 1894 breaking Justin Lacher's old record. Beyers would finish 9-11-0 for 133 yards and three touchdowns. Carter Geditz had two catches for 57 yards and Trevor Heinz 2-15. The Thunder would counter with that one TD pass by Wolf to Bukaske of 82 yards.

Unofficially Bukaske had five carries for 38 yards in rushing, where the Thunder were 33-87. Ipswich totaled 225 rushing yards led by Tyler Hettich at 132 yards and four touchdowns. Next was Kyle Hettich with 45 yards thanks to that one TD rush.

Tyler Hettich came away with seven solo tackles and Grant Weisser added five solo efforts.

Defensively for the Thunder Ian Heinrich had three tackles and Harrison Beyers was next with two in a balanced team effort.

The Thunder closed out their campaign at 1-7. The Tigers (6-2) will start their post-season action journeying to Tyndall to play Bon Homme High School on Thursday at 7 p.m.