Mistakes haunt Cloquet in loss to Hermantown

The Cloquet football team committed a host of penalties and had three turnovers last Friday night - a recipe for a sour-tasting game as the Lumberjacks fell to the Hermantown Hawks 27-12.

Despite the miscues, the Lumberjacks trailed 7-6 at the half and were down only 13-6 entering the final quarter. Then the mistakes piled up and the Hawks slowly pulled away.

"We just made too many mental errors and we didn't handle the pressure of the situation very well, especially offensively," said Cloquet coach Tom Lenarz. "As a result we didn't give ourselves a chance to win at the end. In a dogfight like that versus a good football team, you can't make that many mistakes and still win the game."

The first score of the game came early in the second quarter when Luke Lind ran for 9 yards and a score for the Hawks.

Cloquet responded with a Markus Pokornowski 1-yard touchdown plunge with 41 seconds remaining in the first half, but the extra point kick by Pokornowski was blocked and the score was 7-6 at intermission. For the game, Pokornowski ran for 147 yards on 23 carries. After breaking a bone in his wrist right before the season, he's been wearing a soft cast on his left arm, so is mostly working with just one functional arm.

"Markus is coming around," Lenarz said. "Obviously playing with a cast on is something that will take some time for him. We don't know how long it will be, so we will need to plan as if it will be the whole season, but his effort was good."

Peter Soumis gave Hermantown a 13-6 lead when he completed a 1-yard pass to Darby Gamradt for a touchdown midway through the third quarter. The Lumberjacks again answered the early in the fourth quarter when Pokornowski cut the lead to 13-12 on a 22-yard touchdown dash. The two-point conversion pass from Dalton Bottila to Conrad Kiehn was incomplete, keeping Hermantown in front.

Unfortunately for Cloquet, one play after the kickoff Soumis hooked up with Macade Cannon over the middle for a 59-yard pass and catch for a score. After the extra point kick, it was 20-12 Hermantown.

"They are a good football team and they are going to make plays from time to time," Lenarz said. "They are pretty big up front and we didn't handle ourselves as well as I would have liked from a technique standpoint. We will work on that in practice."

The score remained an eight-point advantage for the Hawks until there was just over a minute left in the game. Then Robbie Thorston crashed in from the 1-yard line for a score, making it 27-12 after the extra point.

The loss drops Cloquet's record to 1-1 on the season and improves the Hawks' record to 1-1 after an opening game loss to Moose Lake-Willow River.

"Those penalties were frustrating for me as a coach," Lenarz said. "I can handle aggressive penalties that sometimes happen when athletes are playing as hard as they can. But silly mental lapses like jumping offsides are a killer, and we had four or five of them. There is no excuse for that and we will be addressing that this week in practice."

Lenarz remains optimistic.

"We are coming along and some of the younger guys are making strides in the right direction," he said. "We are hoping we get some kids back now this week, and that will help us from a depth standpoint for sure. It's still early in the season so I am not overly worried about the mistakes we are making, as long as the kids understand that these things are correctable and we get them corrected. We are playing hard - which is what you like to see, even if we are not always playing smart."

The Lumberjacks will get a chance to fix some of those issues tonight, when they play at home against winless Duluth Denfeld.