Port grounded to defeat in opener

The Port Washington High School football team renewed a rivalry at Cedarburg on a warm and sticky Friday night and got run over.

The Pirates got beat, 31-7, and didn’t execute two of the major tenets of high school football — running the ball and stopping the run.

The Bulldogs went 0-for-2 passing but racked up 417 yards rushing on 43 attempts and held Port’s ground game to 159 yards on 33 runs.

“It came down to we had a rough time stopping the run game. They did a really good job up front moving our guys around,” Port coach John Bunyan said.

“We tried some different fronts; we had nine guys in the box. We tried to bring some blitzes and different things, but they did a really good job of picking up that stuff and executing some big long runs.”

Bulldog Connor Roloff had 209 yards and one touchdown on 17 carries, including an 87-yard burst to break the game open. Wesley Stroebel ran eight times for 78 yards. Quarterback Tyler White had 75 yards and two scores on nine carries, including a 51-yard touchdown on the Bulldogs’ first drive of the third quarter. Cedarburg averaged 9.7 yards per carry.

For Port, junior quarterback Nate Uselding, in his second year as starter, went 19-for-30 for 227 yards and a touchdown and ran 13 times for 41 yards. Star wideout Patrick Lippe caught 12 balls for 127 yards and had eight carries for 46 yards.

“We have a good connection,” Uselding said of himself and Lippe.

“We’ve been working all summer and it’s starting to translate,” Lippe said. “It starts with the big guys. It starts with the run. It’s a team effort.”

Port could move the ball but drives stalled in Bulldogs’ territory until the fourth quarter, when Nate Uselding hit a leaping 6 feet, 5-inch Ryan Burmesch, who fell into the end zone for a six-yard touchdown.

The Bulldogs scored a 28-yard field goal on the opening drive of the game, and Port tried to answer. A six-minute, 19-play drive ended on the Bulldogs’ 3-yard line when Lippe was stopped for a one-yard gain on fourth and three.

Two plays later, Roloff broke into the open up the middle and raced down the right sideline for an 87-yard score.

Port was then forced to punt, and Matt Esselmann hit a beauty, rolling on the Bulldogs’ new turf to the 7-yard line for a 51-yard boot.

Ten runs and one pass later, White scored on a one-yard plunge, and it was 17-0.

Port nearly got on the board late in the half. White fired a moonshot into the waiting arms of Matt Esselmann, who was so open streaking down the left sideline that he could have started his own ZIP code. Port’s fans cheered with anticipation as the ball was in the air.

Esselmann caught it and took it in for a 61-yard score but a flag was thrown. After a short conference by the officials, Port was called for an illegal forward pass and later had to punt.

Port drove to the Bulldogs’ 26-yard line to open the second half, but a pass fell incomplete on fourth and nine.

Five plays later, White scored from 51 yards out, and Cedarburg was up, 24-0.

Port again tried to answer, driving 58 yards to the Bulldogs’ 22-yard line, keyed by a 48-yard bomb to Esselmann, who finished with four catches for 81 yards. But a Uselding run up the middle on fourth and two was stuffed for a two-yard loss.

“We definitely have to convert those,” Bunyan said of the fourth-down misses.

Early in the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs scored on a six-yard run by Daniel Schuette.

Port finally got on the board on its next drive. Uselding drilled a ball to Lippe down the seam for 34 yards, and later found him for gains of seven and eight yards before Burmesch finished the drive.

Bunyan was pleased with Lippe, who is getting college looks.

“He can make some plays,” he said.

Uselding, the coach said, is solid.

“He’s going to be a good quarterback. We’ve got a lot of weapons,” Bunyan said.

One is the coach’s son, tight end Michael, who has committed to the Air Force Academy. But he didn’t see a pass thrown his way in the season opener.

Coach Bunyan, said “it would be great” to get him involved.

The Silver Sailboat, the traveling trophy between the two teams, remains in Cedarburg. Port last won the trophy in 2018 in Cedarburg, when Lippe’s older brother Jake, who now plays for North Dakota State, was a senior in high school.

Cedarburg is the largest school Port will face this season — the main reason the team moved to the East Central Conference, which provides more competitive balance among similarly sized schools.

Coach Bunyan said he scheduled nonconference games against tough opponents for a reason.

“We schedule good teams to see where we’re at. When you do that, you get an opportunity to turn around and make improvements and grow and get better,” he said.

Port’s home opener is at 7 p.m. Friday against Pewaukee, which often makes a deep run in the playoffs. Pewaukee beat Milwaukee Rivers, 48-8, last Friday and went 3-5 last season.

In other East Central games, Waupun beat St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy, 36-0; Berlin beat Winneconne, 28-22; Kettle Moraine Lutheran beat Winnebago Lutheran, 20-13; Kewaskum beat West Bend West, 38-16; Plymouth beat Sheboygan North, 29-0; Sheboygan Falls beat Brown Deer, 33-12; and Ripon lost to Watertown Luther Prep, 34-7.