Record-setting start

In a game marred by penalties and second-half cramps, one thing soared over all of that.

Port Washington High School’s football team can fly. It beat visiting Sheboygan North, 39-20.

The Pirates began running a no-huddle offense early in the game, and quarterback Jack Bunyan and his receivers Aedyn Brownmiller, Kade Kintop and Kiya Sullivan put on an air show the Experimental Aircraft Association would be proud of.

Bunyan threw for 494 yards, breaking the school record he set last year, and five touchdowns with one interception. He went 19-for-31, averaging 26 yards per completion.

Brownmiller caught seven balls for a record 264 yards, breaking Cole Granrath’s record of 189 yards in 2001.

“I’m really proud of us. We got the win. I want to shout out my O-line. No sacks at all. That’s a great plus. Love that,” Bunyan said.

The boys up front, Gio Jacque, LeRoy Pinkston, Jacob Kent, Nate Differt and Konnor Krueger with Caron Hill rotating in, barely allowed Bunyan to get touched.

Bunyan hit Eyob Sullivan for a 25-yard score down the middle in the first quarter, and on the next possession found Kintop in the back of the end zone for a 1-yard score.

In the second quarter, he found Brownmiller for a 38-yard score and, with 63 seconds left in the half and Port on their own 28-yard line, didn’t sit on the ball.

Five plays later, Bunyan launched a bomb to Kiya Sullivan, who got behind the defense for a 50-yard touchdown with one second left in the half.

“That was huge, actually. They kept giving up the out route, so then I suggested we should go backside post. It cleared up perfectly,” Bunyan said. “I let it fly to Kiya. He made a great catch, brought it down. It was good stuff.”

Port led, 29-7, at halftime.

Port pushed its lead to 32-7 with a 28-yard Graysen Allen field goal late in the third quarter.

The Vikings scored a touchdown on a 10-yard run, then recovered an onside kick and scored on a 4-yard pass from Michael Kaquatosh from Rylan Buhr.

Bunyan and Brownmiller closed the scoring on a 74-yard bomb in the fourth quarter.

“I was talking with our quarterback. After the previous drop, I told him to come back to me. It was open all game. It was nice to get that,” Brownmiller, who confirmed he’s a big Darth Maul fan as the villain’s name is printed across the black nasal strip he wore during the game, said.

Kintop had five catches for 98 yards and a score. Kiya Sullivan had two grabs for 60 yards and a touchdown. Mason Schwanz ran 11 times for 70 yards and caught three balls for 43 yards.

There could have been more passing yards. The Pirates had a few first-week drops, but the home run ball hit enough to pull away from the Golden Raiders.

“The offense could have been way better. Probably that’s my fault. Could have had three (touchdowns) today, but I dropped some of them. I’ll make it up next week,” Sullivan said.

Teams struggled to get into a flow due to penalties, which made for a long game. Port got flagged 18 times for 155 yards. The Golden Raiders had eight for 43 yards.

Port got called for a penalty on the opening kickoff, then two on their first three offensive plays. Then Bunyan threw an interception.

Coach John Bunyan, Jack’s father, was perplexed by all the flags, including a helmet-to-helmet contact his teams have never been called for.

“It’s 10 o’clock at night right now. What’s going on?” he said after the game.

But he loved his no-huddle offense.

“Our kids are locked in. We had our receiving corps coming back and Jack is there. They were ready to go. We were working on prepping for this for a long time,” he said.

“You could see the explosiveness of our offense. It’s going to be a really tough match-up for a lot of guys. We have the ability to spread the ball.”

“We really came together as a team during the offseason six months prior,” Brownmiller said. “We’ve been kind of going at this pace for a while now.”

Kintop said, “Six months ago, we’ve been in the gym doing this offense. We know it like the back of our hand at this point. Now you’ve got to get faster with it, we’ve got to condition at little more. As a receiver, I love it. You’re getting the ball.”

Bunyan also praised the guys up front for keeping his son’s jersey clean.

“Huge shoutout to the offensive line. There were no sacks,” he said.

On defense, Hill sprinted downfield and got an interception on a deep pass that was tipped by Joe Rico.

“We just ran a tip drill. I had to snag it and turn upfield. It was pretty sweet,” Hill said.

“The D was great today. We were spot on. We were all on our assignment. We all had great energy.”

Hill put some hard sticks on a few Vikings.

“It feels great to go right through someone,” he said.

Pinkston and ThiLar Goodman each had two tackles for loss, and nine other Pirates each had one.

“I think Austin Knapp had a good game up the middle and made some plays in the backfield too,” Bunyan said.

“We’ve got to clean some things up in the secondary in terms of some man-to-man coverage and things that we were doing. But when you play an option team you have to sit in man a lot because you have responsibilities against the run.”

On Friday, Port gets a tough assignment when Mount Horeb/Barneveld, which beat Grafton at home, comes to Port.

“It’s all starting to come together. If we start cleaning up the penalties, I think we can be really good,” Jack Bunyan said.