Dutchmen fly to Dome

MARSHALL — Edgerton/Ellsworth’s football coach Andrew Fleischman was 0-4 as a coach — including a one-point loss in last season’s game — and 0-2 as a player in the Class 9-man quarterfinals.

After a 28-12 win over Nicollet Friday night at Southwest Minnesota State University, Fleischman can put one in the win column for the Flying Dutchmen.

E/E will meet Ada-Borup (11-1) Friday morning at the Metrodome in the semifinals.

“All the credit goes to our players,” Fleischman said. “We talk about chopping wood, chopping wood, keep playing, keep playing and something good will happen for us.

“Something good happened in the second half.”

It was a tale of two halves for E/E (12-0), as the Flying Dutchmen used three second-half touchdowns to knock off Nicollet.

After a three-and-out on Nicollet’s first drive, E/E scored four plays later on a 2-yard touchdown run by Derek Voge (9 carries, 53 yards, TD) less than three minutes into the game. The Flying Dutchmen went for the 2-point conversion, but failed.

Nicollet would punt on the ensuing drive, but E/E quarterback Isaac Heard (10-for-25, 146 yards, 2 INTs) would give the ball right back to the Raiders via a Jamie Fischer interception.

On the ensuing drive, Raiders starting quarterback Sean Murphy went down with a knee injury, but freshman backup Dalton Elliott found Fischer for a 31-yard touchdown pass on his first throw. The Raiders missed the extra point.

The score would remain 6-6 at the break, due in large part to two more turnovers by Heard.

“I must have been just nervous in the first half,” Heard said. “I wasn’t stepping into my throws and I was afraid of getting hit.”

The second half started off with a bang for E/E, as Jorge Lopez took back the opening kickoff 69 yards for a touchdown. Heard found receiver Casey Schilling for the 2-point conversion and it was 14-6 Flying Dutchmen.

“When we were talking in the huddle, coach said we were going to house it and get a touchdown,” Lopez said. “I wasn’t looking for anything. I was just going straight.”

Fleischman figured Nicollet would squib the second half kick and had a play ready for it. The only problem was it was supposed to go to Jorge’s older brother, Omar. It was a change of plans Fleischman was OK with.

“Whatever Lopez gets in the end zone, we’ll take it,” Fleischman said. “It was huge, it took the monkey off our back and we could relax a little bit and start playing football.”

After back-to-back stops by the E/E defense, Flying Dutchmen running back Devin Hulstein (18 carries, 132 yards, 2 TDs) punched in a touchdown run from six yards out with less than three minutes left in the third quarter. Heard found Hulstein for the 2-point conversion and it was 22-6 Flying Dutchmen.

Hulstein would add a 31-yard touchdown run with eight minutes left in the game to make it 28-6 Flying Dutchmen. After taking nine carries for just 24 yards in the first half, Hulstein ran for 108 yards on nine carries in the second half.

“We were playing kind of slow (in the first half),” Hulstein said. “We weren’t playing our regular Dutchmen football.

“We changed a few blocking schemes (in the second half), but we just came out and played. Everyone came out and hit, we ran the ball harder, hit the holes harder and we just played Dutchmen football in the second half.”

Fischer would find the end zone on a 1-yard run for Nicollet (9-2) with 1:12 remaining in the game, but E/E would recover the onside kick to seal it.

Nicollet 6 0 0 6 — 12

Edge/Ells 6 0 16 6 — 28

Tags: edgerton ellsworth, sports, prep, football