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St. Edmond will face No. 3 Garrigan

ALGONA — For each of the past 30 regular season games, the Bishop Garrigan football team has looked at the scoreboard and celebrated a victory.

That streak will be put to the test here Friday night, as the third-ranked (Class A) Golden Bears host St. Edmond in a non-district contest. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.

Matt Dillon, the first-year head coach for the Gaels (2-1 overall), is coming off a commanding 60-16 victory over Eagle Grove last Friday night at home. St. Edmond accounted for eight rushing touchdowns and 486 yards on the ground in the win.

“When you’ve won 30 in a row in the regular season, are celebrating homecoming and have all those positives going for you, I’m sure we are just a spec of dust on the mantle they have to sweep off,” said Dillon, who led West Des Moines Dowling to a 26-game regular season win streak during his stint there. “We’ll go up there, compete and give it everything we got.”

Senior Sean Newell ran for a career-high 200 yards on just 12 carries, scoring four of those touchdowns. Kase Baker added 149 and a pair of TDs in the fourth quarter alone, with Peyton Spangler running for 82 yards and a touchdown, and Sean Flattery adding 49 more and a score.

“That performance absolutely caught our attention,” BGHS head coach Marty Wadle said. “(The Gaels) were able to take advantage of things. They do a lot of different things with the wing-set and have a lot of guys that carry the ball.”

Newell leads the team with 388 yards and five touchdowns this year, with Flattery second at 294 and four. Spangler has 195 yards and a pair of trips to paydirt. With 1,015 rushing yards as a team, the Gaels currently rank first in Class A, and are averaging 9.3 per carry, also tops.

“It’s going to come down to the people up front and whether or not we can match up with them,” Dillon said. “(Garrigan) is big, physical and can impose their will on people. That’s the thing we have to stay away from.”

Jackson Bemrich had 12.5 tackles, including two solo stops for loss, with Flattery adding 11 tackles. The Gael defense had nine tackles for loss and forced three turnovers.

Newell and Flattery have a combined 66.5 tackles, with Drew Schaeffer, Bemrich and Nick Lawler with 20-plus. St. Edmond has forced 10 turnovers, including six fumbles.

“Our kids have had a good week of practice and we feel like we have a good game plan for what we can accomplish on offense and defense,” Dillon said.

After opening the season with a pair of close wins over Emmetsburg (14-12) and Mason City Newman (28-21), Bishop Garrigan rolled at Lake Mills last Friday, 48-28.

Senior quarterback Brad Capesius ran for over 200 yards and scored two touchdowns, as Preston Kohlhaas added 95 yards and Eric Thul 90 more. Both Kohlhaas and Thul also had two scores.

Capesius, who is now 24-2 as a starter including a run to the state championship game his sophomore year, also completed 5 of 12 passes and had an interception on defense.

On the season, Capesius has a team-high 284 yards rushing, averaging almost nine yards per carry. Kohlhaas has 163 yards and Thul 160 more.

“Everybody ran the ball pretty well against Lake Mills for us,” Wadle said. “With Brad, it was us taking what the defense was giving us. We just used what was working.”

Alex Mammen anchors the BGHS defense with 17 tackles on the year, as Cade Winkel, Sam Vaske and Aiden Koob all have at least 11 stops. They have forced eight turnovers, including three interceptions by Tristan Ferguson.

Through three games, Garrigan has allowed 520 yards rushing and no individual has surpassed the 100-yard mark in a game.

“We’ll have to play well on defense to try and slow their run game down,” Wadle said. “We want to keep things going in the right direction before district play starts.”

The Golden Bears open district action in Britt at No. 8 (A) West Hancock (2-1) next week, with the Gaels hosting IKM-Manning (2-1) at Dodger Stadium.

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