Welcome to the NLC

HOUSTON — The Houston Hawks made history Saturday afternoon, earning their first Northern Lights Conference win in program history. But Skyview didn’t make it easy.

The Hawks survived a late Panther push to grab a 28-20 victory in their NLC debut at Terry Shurtleff Field.

“Houston’s tough,” Skyview head coach Jerry Byrne said after the Panther loss. “They’re going to do well in our league.”

Skyview nearly doubled Houston in total yards — the Panthers had 324 compared to Houston’s 166 — but the Hawks took advantage of the short field twice to grab key scores.

“They’re tough and they kept coming at us and capitalizing on our mistakes,” Byrne said. “That was the whole thing.”

Even though the Hawks did allow more than 300 yards of total offense, the Houston defense made several key plays to help the Hawks grab the historic win.

Houston followed a key fourth-down stop by Hawks defensive tackle Joe Van Hyning with a Kyle Sumner touchdown early in the second quarter. Van Hyning, a Houston hockey standout in his first season with the HHS football program, stuffed Skyview tailback Bradley Lapp on a 4th-and-1 play to give the Hawks the ball on Skyview’s 31-yard line.

Three plays later, Sumner danced into the end zone from 5 yards out to give the Hawks the touchdown advantage.

Early in the third quarter, the Hawks scorched Skyview once again. Following a bad snap on a Panther punt that gave Houston the ball at the Panthers 5-yard line, sophomore Micah Ranum scored the first of his two touchdowns to give the Hawks the 14-7 lead.

Houston also used a few unforced Skyview errors to put points on the board. With Skyview trailing 21-14, the Panthers were tagged with a pair of unsportsmanlike conduct calls — one which resulted in an ejection — and the ball was pushed down to the 7-yard line.

Sumner scored two plays later to give the Hawks the 14-point advantage.

Ranum and Sumner scored a pair of touchdowns each to lead the Hawks. Ranum, a sophomore fullback, posted a team-high 93 yards on 15 carries, while Sumner added 31 yards on 11 tries.

After heading into the intermission trailing 7-6, the Hawks scored three times in the third quarter.

“It was big for us to put some points on the board,” Houston head coach Norm Bouchard said. “We were able to spread the field out a little bit.”

The emergence of Ranum in the third quarter helped the Hawks create some momentum on offense. The 6-foot-1 and 170-pound bruising back posted several key runs up the gut of the Skyview defense in the third frame, including a 26-yard run that helped set up his 9-yard score midway through the period.

Bouchard said the use of Ranum on the inside runs was part of an adjustment the Hawks made at halftime.

“It helped spread the defense,” Bouchard said.

Skyview trailed by two touchdowns midway through the fourth quarter, but used a 90-yard scoring drive to get back into the game. Lapp, who rushed for 78 yards on 14 carries, scampered for runs of 44 and 26 yards during the drive to help set up Skyview quarterback Matt Meade’s 1-yard touchdown.

Skyview took the 7-6 lead late in the first half with Lapp’s 49-yard touchdown catch. With less than a minute remaining in the first half, Meade found Lapp open in the flats, and the Skyview tailback weaved his way through the Hawks defense and into the end zone.

“We like to throw that one in every once in a while,” Byrne said of the play.

Lapp finished with five catches for 93 yards. Senior Markus Quint led the Panthers with 110 yards on 22 carries.

Ranum, the Houston starter at fullback, played the final 10 minutes of the game at quarterback after Jordan Webb, Houston’s starting signal caller, left the game to rush to a wedding.

“His brother’s getting married today and they gave us until 3 o’clock, and we kept him until 3:15,” Bouchard joked. “Family comes first in our program. He stayed as long as he could.”

Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.

Houston 28, Skyview 20

Saturday, Houston High School

Second quarter

Houston — Sumner 5 run (kick failed) 6:41.

Skyview — Lapp 49 pass from Meade (Berzanske kick) 00:24.

Third quarter

Houston — Ranum 5 run (Mason catch) 10:27.

Skyview — Meade 29 run (Berzanske kick) 8:23.

Houston — Ranum 9 run (Contreras kick) 7:34.

Houston — Sumner 4 run (Contreras kick) 3:29.

Fourth quarer

Skyview — Meade 1 run (run failed) 4:58.

Individual statistics

RUSHING — Skyview: Quint 22-110, Lapp 14-78, Meade 14-36; Houston: Ranum 15-93, Sumner 11-31, Webb 5-(-21), Origer 3-15.

PASSING — Skyview: Meade 4-9-1—100; Houston: Webb 6-14-1—48.

RECEIVING — Skyview: Lapp 5-93, Thorton 1-7; Houston: Mason 3-24, Stinson 2-9, Sumner 1-8, Munoz 1-7.