Holy Angels Stars Defeat Farmington on Homecoming Night; Look Ahead to Shakopee

After his team's , football coach Ray Betton finally said it was OK to use the “S” word.

That's “S” as in Shakopee.

“Now we can start talking about those boys from Shakopee,” Betton told the team after the game.

The Stars host the Sabers next Friday night in a tilt that will likely decide the Missota Conference championship. Both teams will enter that game 4-0 in league play after their wins Friday—Shakopee downed New Prague 48-14—and the winner will have a one-game lead in the standings with two games to go.

After the Stars beat Chanhassen last Friday to get to 3-0, Betton did everything he could to keep the focus on Friday night's matchup with Farmington.

“We concentrated so much on taking it one day at a time,” Betton said. “We were not allowed to say the 'S' word. Now we can start talking about them and gameplanning for them.”

Friday's Defeat of Farmington

After a sloppy first half, there was some doubt as to whether or not Holy Angels would be able to hold up its end and get through to the Shakopee game unbeaten.

“It was all our mistakes,” Betton said of the reason for the game being knotted 7-7 at halftime. “We threw a pick and got stopped on downs, and we had a ton of penalties. We were killing ourselves.”

But that changed in the second half, when the Stars scored 28 unanswered points to turn the game into a rout.

Farmington actually struck first in the game. After Holy Angels went three-and-out on its first possession, it took the Tigers just two plays to find the end zone, on a 48-yard run by Athen Ashen.

The Stars answered nearly as quickly, scoring on a four-play drive that took just over a minute and a half. Sam Keis hit Will Pagel over the middle for a 39-yard gain, then ran it the final 24 yards himself on the next play to tie it.

But while it took the teams just 4 minutes, 9 seconds to put 14 points on the board, the next score didn't come until the 4:35 mark of the third quarter.

Holy Angels' second touchdown was also set up by a big play. Speedster Michael Price ran for 68 yards on the counter play, getting run out of bounds at the 3. Pagel ran it in from there to give Holy Angels the lead for good.

The break of the game came in the closing minutes of the third quarter. After getting pinned deep in their own end by a Farmington punt, the Stars punted the ball back to the Tigers from the shadow of their own goalpost. But the punt hit a Farmington blocker and the Stars recovered, and instead of the Tigers being 40 yards away from tying it up, Holy Angels took advantage of the turnover to go up 21-0.

The Stars' third scoring drive covered 60 yards in eight plays and was capped by a 7-yard run by Mikias Alipate with 9:01 left in the game.

Alipate said many different factors came together in the second half, allowing the Stars to pull away.

“The line was doing its job and the defense was swarming to the ball,” he said.

He admitted it was hard to stay focused on Farmington this week without peeking ahead to next Friday's opponent.

“We try not to look past anybody,” Alipate said. “But it was hard. I felt like in the second half we started to focus on [winning] this game.”

Alipate and Pagel each tacked on touchdowns in the fourth quarter, but not before the game was suspended for more than 20 minutes after a big hit on a Farmington receiver. John Dittman was hit after making a reception over the middle and immediately crumpled to the carpet, face down. He remained motionless for several minutes, and was eventually taken off on a stretcher. His status was unknown.

“I hope for the best for that Farmington player,” Betton said. “We were making some pretty big hits out there tonight.”

The Stars also had an incredibly balanced rushing attack on the night. Anthony Baysah led the way with 89 yards, but three other Holy Angels running backs also reached the 80-yard plateau: Alipate had 85, Ptice ran for 82 and quarterback Keis finished with 80.