Every team has its day in the sun, and
Lake City (Minn.) shined bright Friday halting the nation's longest active high school football win streak at 71 games with a 30-13 Southeast District season-opening victory over
Caledonia (Minn.).
Lake City, which was 11-44 since 2015 and hadn't had a winning season since 2012, broke a 13-all halftime tie with 17 unanswered points in the second half to knock off the Warriors, who hadn't lost since the 2014 state playoff semifinals.
According to the Post Bulletin, quarterback
Justin Wohlers accounted for 275 yards, Jon Harvey had two of his team's four interceptions and
Kris Ryan clinched the contest with a 57-yard touchdown run.
It all ended the nation's ninth-longest win streak of all time. Caledonia played without quarterback Eli King, an Iowa State-bound basketball player who elected not to play football his senior season after suffering a knee injury on the gridiron last year. Caledonia coach Carl Fruechte offered no excuses, instead crediting Lake City for an aggressive, "downhill" attack and playing "the game the way it's supposed to be played."
"That streak is humbling, but it shows what our community has done," Fruechte told reporter Pat Ruff after the game. "If you'd have told me (in the late 1990s) that we'd (win 71 straight games), I'd have never believed you. But I am proud of the kids who played tonight, too. We've got good kids, and they're going to be OK."
Said Lake City coach Trevor Narum: "Our kids believed in themselves. They had a different look in their eyes tonight."
All eyes will now be on Southern Columbia Area (Catawissa, Pa.), which now owns the nation's longest active win streak at 62 games.
The Tigers defeated Bloomsburg 41-0 on Friday after opening the season Aug. 27 with a 43-0 victory over Berwick. On Friday, they host
Loyalsock Township (Williamsport) (2-0), which beat Bloomsburg 34-14 to open the season.
Southern Columbia Area beat Loyalsock Township last season 50-20, the first meeting between the team's since 2011. Since 2004, Southern Columbia owns an 8-1 edge against the Lancers.
The Tigers haven't lost a game since the 2016 PIAA Class AA championship, 49-7 to Steel Valley. They've outscored their 61 opponents since then (one win was by forfeit), 3,193-553. That's an average score of 52-9.
They'll need more than five more unbeaten seasons to approach the national record of 151 set by
De La Salle (Concord, Calif.) from 1992-2004.
Two national
MaxPreps Top 25 teams, No. 14 Chandler (Ariz.) and No. 18 Corner Canyon (Draper, Utah), own national Top 10 win streaks.
1.
Southern Columbia Area (Catawissa, Pa.), 62
10.
Chandler (Ariz.), 37
Quarterback Liam Klebon returns to help Southern Columbia Area extend its current national-best win streak.
File photo by Paul Burdick
