Demons bounced out of WIAA football playoffs

By Jennifer Eisenbart
SPORTS EDITOR
In the end Friday night, the Burlington High School football team just didn’t have an answer for Watertown quarterback Tarek Yaeggi.
Yaeggi completed 21 of 30 passes for 293 yards and five touchdowns in Friday’s WIAA Division 2 Level One playoff game, as the Goslings eliminated BHS 49-14.
It was Burlington’s first time back in the playoffs since 2006, but Yaeggi’s brilliance on offense took the Demons out of their game plan.
“He was very good,” said BHS coach Hans Block. “We had a difficult time getting to him, and he was able to put the ball on the spot.”
With the Gosling scoring 14 first-quarter points, and then adding another four touchdowns in the second quarter, Block said the Demons’ plan of running the ball to keep Watertown off the field was dead in the water.
“At that point, we were pretty much totally out of our game plan offensively,” Black said. “We started going to exclusively passing, and we had a lot of three and outs.
“It’s a high risk, high reward type of activity,” he added, saying that many of Burlington’s drives ended in three and outs – giving the ball back to the Goslings.
Yaeggi made BHS pay in the second quarter, throwing for three touchdowns in the final 3:19 of the quarter to give Watertown a 42-14 halftime lead.
“I was proud of our guys, the way that they battled,” Block said. “We just physically had a hard time matching up with them.”
Both of Burlington’s scores came from senior quarterback Jayden Essman, who ran in from 20 yards out for the first score, and then connected with Chad Redmer for a 40-yard touchdown with less than a minute and a half left in the first half.
Essman led all BHS rushers with 68 yards on 11 carries, and completed 10 of 34 passes for 184 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions.
BHS will now graduate 19 seniors, a group that brought BHS a 6-3 overall record, a 5-2 record in the Southern Lakes Conference and the school’s first WIAA playoff berth in six years.
“They’re really a classy group of guys who worked really, really hard,” said Block, adding that he enjoyed the time with everyone involved with the program this year. “I’m really proud of their accomplishments, how they went about their business.
“Obviously, I’d still like to be playing, but it just didn’t happen.”