
Photo Courtesy of Jeff Yoder
It was district drama Friday night at Wilton High School when two of the top ten teams in Class 2A got together for a key contest that saw No. 7 Mid-Prairie escape with a 21-20 win over the No. 9 Beavers and spoil Homecoming.
On Kaden Kos’ 18th birthday, he was the one handing out gifts, including a 14-0 lead in the first six minutes. He found the endzone twice, the first, a 10-yard rush to capping a nine play 63 yard drive. The second, an addition to his personal highlight reel, a 77 yard punt return for six, and it looked like the Hawks were off to the races. Wilton responded in the second with a short field, five play 25 yard drive finished by Gunner Edwards to Gatlin Rogers for a five-yard score, with a missed two pointer. The final half of the second frame featured six possessions, one of which was a 12-play 83 yard dominant drive from the Hawks where Carson Humphrey pulled in a jump ball in the end zone from 10 yards out to push the lead to 21-6. That’s where things stood at half, despite a late Peyton Fox fumble recovery for the Hawks and a Gabe Brisker pick for the Beavers. The third quarter saw Wilton run off 14 straight. The Beaver secondary leads the state in interceptions, and they got the Hawks again with Oliver Grings, to set up a 21-yard drive, the final 15 to the end zone came on a controversial scoring toss from Edwards to Bryer Putman to make it 21-12. The Beavers scored their third takeaway of the night next Mid-Prairie possession as Grings stepped in front of another pass and returned it to the nine. Next play Hayden Hill was in the endzone and the two made it a one point game. After a Golden Hawk drive stalled, the Beavers burned up most of the clock on a 17 play 76 yard march, but got nothing on the board after a failed fourth down at the Mid-Prairie 15. After the Golden Hawks stalled again on offense, the defense came up with the clincher, on fourth down Humphrey picked off the Beavers at the Mid-Prairie 35, and the celebration on Wilton’s Homecoming was Mid-Prairie’s. Golden Hawk head coach Daren Lambert joined the KCII locker room show to talk about the of the win. “Point simple, we said Monday ‘you’re fighting for a district title tonight. We knew this was going to be a tough team and if you want to put your name at the top of the list you had to do something special against a good Wilton team on the road. The early 14 points were awfully big for us, I’m proud of the guys for coming out focused, putting together a long drive, we get the stop, get the special teams score. Those things can flip a game. Credit Wilton on their comeback, we knew it was going to be easy. First half we were able to mix in some running and some tempo. They took some chances jumping routes. I have a lot of confidence in our guys because they put in a lot of work, they want it, and we expect a lot out of them. You just have to fight, whether it’s football, whether it’s life, you’re faced with adversity there’s two choices, you can run from it or you can stand up and fight back and our guys fought back tonight. I feel like we could name every single person that was on the field and on the sideline tonight. It takes everybody in a win like this!”
The Hawks won the game despite, allegedly, being outgained 291-219, including 131-31 after half. Mid-Prairie lost the turnover battle 3-2. Kaden Kos led the Golden Hawk offense with 187 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns. Weber threw 14 of 21 for 115 yards, a score and three interceptions. Defensively, Kaden Kos, Cecil Kelly, Caden Houston and Kendrick Kos made more than 30 tackles as a group, Humphrey and Fox had takeaways. Bryer Putman led Wilton with 157 yards receiving and a score. Edwards had more than 200 all-purpose yards and Grings two interceptions. The Golden Hawks are now 3-1, 1-0 in district play, Wilton is 2-2, 0-1 in district. Mid-Prairie hosts West Liberty Friday.