Urbana Hillclimbers climb all over the Vikings of Columbus Northland 40-20

Tagged under: Beyond The Keystone, Gameday Hub, News

David Burnworth | September 3, 2022

Tonight I made the short drive to Northland high school in Columbus, Ohio to catch the Vikings battle the Hillclimbers from Urbana. I spoke briefly to the Vikings head coach Ryan Sayers down on the field before kickoff and asked him what he thought of the teams chances tonight and he said I think we will be OK. We are bigger than they are but we will have to see how things play out. Coach Sayers always treats pafootballnews very well.

The Vikings would receive the opening kickoff and this got the game started with a bang as Preston Wisma collected the ball near the four-yard line and never stopped running until he had gone 96-yards for the score to give the Vikings the 6-0 lead. From there the Vikings defense would get two sacks from Jordan Blankson on quarterback Will Donahoe that total close to 30-yards. The defense would stay in the forefront with the Hillclimbers getting sacks from Shane Davenport and Rayvon Rogan. Davenport was unblockable most of the night while Rogan looked very good on both sides of the ball.

Special teams would hurt the Vikings all game long with 5:23 left in the first quarter a terrible snap caused Kwabena Yeboah to be tackled at his own 6-yard line by Preston Wisma. One play later the Hillclimbers would get on the board for the first time with Austin Hill doing the honors. Donahoe would nail the point after kick to give the visitors their first lead at 7-6, with 5:20 left in the quarter.

Davenport would get to Amir Brown for a short loss. Davenport, listed as a defensive end used his speed to cause nightmares for the Vikings backfield. At 6-2, 190 he is going to create all kinds of problems for anyone trying to block him. Terryn Thomas would be pressured all night long keeping him from ever getting a chance to set back and get a good look downfield was scrambling for his life at the 4:00 mark and somehow got a pass-off that was badly underthrown but brown came back for it and made an amazing catch to move the chains. The Hillclimbers defense responded with Jonathan Hildebrand stopping Kilburn for a 4-yard loss on an option play. Another bad snap on a punt resulted in Yeboah being tackled at his own 22-yard-line. From there a 20-yard touchdown pass to Hildebrand made this a 14-6 game with 0:15 seconds left in the exciting quarter.

The second quarter was all Hillclimbers. The defense would get picks from Michael Holland and Hildebrand. The offense would get a big 40-yard field goal from Donahoe, that looked like a Tony Perez line drive. The kick gave us our halftime score of 17-6. As the teams headed off of the field the Vikings offense had unofficially gained 52-yards on 33 plays. The Hillclimbers had accumulated 132 yards on 29 plays. Even with the game being as one-sided as it had been I think that the Vikings were still it but they needed to come out and make some kind of statement.

Well, things did not go well for the home team with 10:33 left in the third Landon Key would force a Thomas fumble on a sack with the ball on the grass where Kayden Jacobs scooped it up and scored on a nice run to make this a 24-6 game, with 10:33 left in the third stanza. The Vikings had little to lose by going for it on fourth and seven but the Hillclimbers defense was ready with Rogan sacking Thomas. Ten seconds later Hildebrand would go 52-yards to put the visitors up 31-6.

Brown would catch the ball on a little screen pass but before he could get his speed going he was blasted for a loss of two by Jacobs. After getting the ball back Urbana would get a 35-yard from Key, then an 11-yard run by Donahoe with 11-yards added on due to another bad penalty of the Vikings. Key would dart to his left and go the final 2-yards untouched for the score to make this a 38-6 game. One of the bigger problems for the Vikings was undisciplined penalties. If I were smart enough to be a coach every player having one of these types of flags thrown on them would be running until they puked, at the next practice.

After a safety made this a 40-6 game the Vikings looked to have gotten a 98-yard punt return for a touchdown by Kilburn but another penalty was called negating the score. Even though the Vikings were out of the game you could tell several of their players were not quitting and this led to two scores in the final 2:02 of the game for them. First, after the backup quarterback, Alex Heff fumbled the ball Brown scooped it up and went 66-yards for the score, and then Neff threw an Archie Manning-like pass to a wide-open Thomas for the touchdown giving us our 40-20 final score.

Unofficial Stats

Urbana

50 plays

371 yards

Passing 7-12 2 TD’S

Northland

55 plays

163 yards

Passing 7-16 1 TD 1 INT

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