Warriors Chip Away To Win Over Lions

Chippewa Hills 32  Newaygo 19
It could have been worse.
There were three times the visiting Warriors drove into the red zone poised to score only to be stymied by turnovers. Three times they were on the cusp of breaking the game open. The Lions D came up big on those occasions but the Warriors outlasted their hosts and came away with their third win in the last four games after an 0-3 start
A youth driven Warrior team with just 2 seniors on their squad (both linemen) has improved markedly since the season began. On Friday they exchanged punches with a game Lions team before pulling away in the second half by winning the battle in the trenches.

The Lions took advantage of a Blake Kerr runback into Warrior territory on the opening kickoff and after a couple of stops Grant Harkness found an open Dyllan Bazzette who moved the ball inside the five, Harkness took it in on the next play and after Josiah Long’s boot it was 7-0 Lions.
Chip Hills engineered an effective drive on the next possession mixing in some play action passes with a running game buoyed by the performance of the CH Oline and answered when Jon Koepf put up 6. The onside kick by the visitors and soon after the Warriors took a 12-7 lead.

The Lions responded with a quick drive of their own capped off when Harkness lofted a floater that Long tucked in and scored 65 yards later to put Newaygo up 13-12 after one.
The second quarter saw the teams battle back and forth before Koepf put the exclamation point on another CH drive to send the teams to intermission with the visitor holding an 18-13 edge.

The second half saw CH muff the kickoff and stay pinned inside the ten due to penalties. On 3rd and long a potential breakaway pass was broken up by Kerr and CH had to punt. The punt was fumbled giving the visitors the ball and they marched downfield before Remy Wells picked off a potential scoring pass and the Lions took over. They couldn’t move the ball and the punt after 3 downs was taken by Austin Humphrey who wove his way through the Lion defenders to make it 24-13.

​After the ensuing kickoff the Lions were hit by penalties and an inability to keep the Warriors out of their backfield. The punt that followed this futility was touched by the receiving team and the Lions recovered to retake possession. After Harkness found Kerr twice to drive Newaygo into CH territory Harkness hit again, this time to Bazzette and after a failed conversion the Lions had cut the lead to 24-19.
CH would add another TD while the Lions could not mount a drive and the youthful Warriors captured the road win.

Defensively Aaron Garza led the way for Newaygo with 11 tackles while Dyllan Bazzette notched 10. Harkness tossed for 219 yards and a couple of TDs and added another on the ground while Bazzette, Long and Kerr finished with 83, 65, and 63 receiving yards respectively.
Newaygo (1-4, 2-5) will travel to Stanton to face Central Montcalm (1-4, 2-5). Chippewa Hills (2-3, 3-4) will host Tri County (4-1, 6-1).