By Dan Truttschel
Sports Correspondent
The opening moments of Saturday’s night’s Ironman Football League contest with the Milwaukee Venom didn’t start the way the Southern Lakes Blue Devils had hoped.
But the finish was much better – and in the end, that’s all that really counts any way.
Milwaukee jumped out to an 6-0 lead, but that was the only score the Venom would put on the board, as the Blue Devils answered with 20 straight points in a 20-6 victory.
The win closed the Blue Devils’ regular season at 5-4 overall and earned them a tie for the second seed in the league playoffs that start this weekend.
Despite the win, Blue Devils’ coach Tom Hawkins knows his team is capable of an even better effort.
“I’m happy with the win, but not happy with the performance of the team overall,” he said. “We had some good spots and bad spots in the game. But overall, we need to play much better if we’re going to go farther (in the postseason).
“We had so many penalties and were missing many key starters once again. Hopefully we’re going to get most of our guys back next week.”
Hawkins said he had a stern message for the team after the Venom took the early lead.
“I told them that every team puts their pads on just like you guys do,” he said. “They’re grown men and they’re not going to lay down for everybody. I told them, ‘You better reach down inside and find that drive to overcome this.’”
Southern Lakes got on the board on a 12-yard touchdown pass from Chris Calhoun to Ryan Oleson, but the Blue Devils failed on the conversion.
The tie was short lived, as Kyle Wilson scored on a 22-yard touchdown run to put the Blue Devils in front for good. A fake extra point on the conversion worked, as Gary Griffin connected on a pass to Auton Terry.
That’s how the score stayed until the final five minutes, when the Blue Devils added an insurance touchdown.
Griffin hit Nate Moses on a 52-yard scoring strike to close out the game. The extra point failed.
One positive, along with the final score, was the overall defensive effort, despite several key absences, Hawkins said.
That task is far from easy with the constantly changing personnel at a number of positions, he added.
“Hats off to the defensive coaches and the guys rallying up,” Hawkins said. “We made the right adjustments and pretty much shut (the other team) down.”
Next up for the Blue Devils is a playoff opener this Sunday night at the Shorewood Monarchs, beginning at 6 p.m. Shorewood defeated Southern Lakes 18-13 back on June 10.
One key to staying alive in the postseason is a simple one, Hawkins said.
And that’s a full squad at practice during the week as the Blue Devils prepare for the rematch with the Monarchs.
“We have to make sure everybody is there (at practice this week),” Hawkins said. “We need to focus on what we’re going to do, execute it in the game and make sure we come out and play the kind of game we know we can.”
Shorewood enters the playoffs at 6-3. The Wauwatosa Spartans won the American Conference title with an 8-1 overall record, including 4-0 in division play. In the National Conference, the Madison Mustangs were undefeated at 9-0 to win not only the division title but the overall regular-season crown.
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