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Football team goes to the air to beat Macalester

by Kevin Byrne

After 60 minutes, 154 plays and 872 yards, the dust finally settled and a team emerged victorious. The Grinnell College Pioneers came out on top last Saturday, edging their way past the Macalester Scots, 31-23.

It was a close contest but the Pioneers were up to their usual tricks, scoring big in the fourth quarter with several clutch performances from a handful of Pioneers.

The only scoring of the first quarter came off the fot of kicker Bud Baumgartner ’07 on a 28-yard field goal.

The second quarter was a bit more action-packed, with both teams combining for a total of 23 points. Grinnell scored on a run by Clarence “CJ” Moore ’09 from 12 yards out to make the score 10-0. The Scots answered with a field goal and a touchdown, but failed to convert the point after touchdown.

After Kyle Perry ’08 hauled in a pass from Sean Pfalzer ’07 from 27 yards out for another touchdown, the Pioneers went into the locker room at halftime leading 17-9.

“The O-line did a great job of getting to the perimeter of the defense and tangling up Macalester’s linebackers,” said tailback Lance Burkholder ’08, “but a lot of key blocks were also made by receivers and backs.”

Burkholder led the rush attack in both halves for the Pioneers’ offense, racking up 99 yards on 25 carries. His steady ground production gave quarterback Pfalzer time to find open receivers during the second half. Pfalzer found Perry once again for a score and hit Marcus Plouzek ’09 with a 69-yard touchdown pass to put Grinnell in the lead for good.

After a Macalester touchdown in the fourth quarter, two Grinnell defensive stops led by Leo Martin ’06 sealed the 31-23 victory for the Pioneers.

Martin was a very strong defensive presence on Saturday, finishing the game with 20 tackles and a sack.

“I think the defense played fairly solid,” said linebacker Brett Maloney ’09, who had two sacks of his own last Saturday. “Their offensive numbers were rather high but when it came down to crunch time we did what we had to do. About 70 of their yards came on a reverse flea flicker, but the rest was mainly short to intermediate length plays.”

Although Maloney was satisfied with the defense he felt they could have performed better. “We played well, but look for the defense to step it up more next week and hold Illinois College to much less than 400 yards and 23 points.”

Illinois College is coming to Grinnell this Saturday for a 1:30 p.m. game. The Blueboys are currently 1-1 overall with a record of 0-1 in the Midwest Conference.

Grinnell lost only one game at home last year and will be looking to defend their home turf once again this weekend.

“We have to continue to work on execution on both sides of the ball,” said Defensive Coordinator Tim Hollibaugh. “On defense, the big play continues to hurt us.  On offense, penalties in clutch situations are proving to be our demise. If we can take care of these two things, we are going to play better football.” 

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