Woodland champ a welcome foe for Grafton

Grafton High School’s football team renewed a rivalry with a familiar start at Greenfield in a Division 2 playoff game last Friday.

The Black Hawks took a 10-3 halftime lead and extended it to 24-3 with barely a minute left in the third quarter thanks to a 62-yard touchdown run by quarterback Hunter Klippel.

Coach Jim Norris yelled to his team that the game wasn’t over. The former Woodland Conference foe that Grafton beat three of four times — including 66-33 last season — showed him he was right.

Greenfield, this year’s Woodland Conference champion, drove for a touchdown, then recovered an onside kick. Grafton senior Hudson Miller negated that by sacking Lucas O’Brien and forcing a fumble that John Boesch recovered.

But Grafton was forced to punt, and Greenfield scored with less than three minutes to play. This time, Miller recovered the onside kick and Grafton hung on for a 24-17 win.

The Hawks were happy with the win but not the ending.

“We’ve gotta finish games,” Norris said.

The defense held Greenfield to 232 yards and 17 points after allowing 28 or more in each of the last four.

“Our defense took prior weeks personally and we made sure that the game was to the standard that had been met years prior,” Miller said.

“We just put it all in this week. It’s great to see a group of guys like this come together and do what we’ve done,” linebacker Jason Grunwaldt said.

Klippel finished with 190 yards on nine carries, often finding room outside the tackles. One went for 84 yards.

“Credit to our offensive linemen. A truck could have fit through the holes they were giving me,” he said.

“Even the wide receivers were getting after it. I saw one of my guys in the slot drill someone to the ground as I’m runnin’.”

Norris called Klippel a stud.

“He’s come such a long way,” he said.

Jack Nelson ran 29 times for 129 yards and a score.

“Coming into the game, we knew that we had to rely heavily on the run game. Hunter is a great quarterback, and he’s really successful with the read plays,” Nelson said.

Parker Shaw caught a 10-yard score, and Ronan Byrnes hit a 27-yard field goal. Grunwaldt and Miller each had 12 tackles. Boesch had 10. Miller had 2.5 sacks, and Khaleb Drake Gray had 1.5.

Grafton beat Greenfield three of four times while in the Woodland. Greenfield finished 7-3.

Grafton, 6-4, plays at 9-1 Elkhorn on Friday, Oct. 29, in what will be a battle of running teams. Elkhorn has players with 1,000, 700 and 600 yards rushing. For Grafton, Nelson has 980 yards and 10 touchdowns and Klippel had 661 yards and eight scores.