The Southern Door football team put an exclamation mark on homecoming week with a 40-14 victory over Clintonville. The Eagles controlled both sides of the line of scrimmage which allowed their skill players to navigate the offense down the field and forced Clintonville’s offense into making throws under duress. 

 

The Eagles really took flight after the first quarter, which ended with the Truckers in front, 8-6. The first score came on the opening drive on a two yard touchdown run from Jack Peterson, to put Southern Door ahead, 6-0. Taylor Schaefer was the workhorse for that drive and much of the game for Southern Door, but fell just shy of getting his first touchdown of the season. Clintonville answered the opening drive with a 32 yard touchdown pass from Sam Wegener to Kolton Barkow. 

 

Southern Door took the game back over in the second quarter when Drew Daoust hit Jared Hawkey on a 16-yard touchdown pass, to Southern Door up 12-8. That was the first of three Daoust touchdowns on the night. With 2:38 left in the first half, Peterson scored his second rushing touchdown on a 52 yard touchdown run. Southern Door then went to halftime with an 18-8 lead. 

 

Scoring would go silent in the third quarter until Southern Door got a 26-yard touchdown run from Daoust with 3:02 left in the period. Not even two game minutes later, Daoust returned an interception for a touchdown from around 30 yards out. Within a couple of minutes, Southern Door’s ten-point lead turned into a 32-8 route. 

 

Derek Shinkgten scored the final touchdown for the Eagles with just under ten minutes left to play in the fourth quarter. Jonas Jandrin followed that up with an interception defense. The Truckers gave one last effort and it paid off late in the fourth quarter when Sam Wegener found Jordan Wegener for a 58 yard score. 

 

For the Eagles, Ben Kline got his first win in his current role as Interim Head Coach. It was announced on Friday that he would be coaching the game for the Eagles. Kline was able to get each healthy player in the game and said that the reserves even preserved their goal of giving up only 15 or less points, when they stopped Clintonville’s final two point conversion attempt. The Eagles defensive line brought pressure all night, including Kody Marchant who was in on a couple of sacks. 

 

Southern Door is now 5-1 overall this season and 3-0 in conference play. The next game they play in is at Peshtigo, on October 1st. Pregame coverage on 104.1 WRLU begins at 6:30 PM with a kickoff at 7:00 PM. 

 

You can hear from Coach Ben Kline after the game: