By Wendi Reardon Price
Staff Writer
wprice@mihomepaper.com
ROCHESTER HILLS — Clarkston Varsity Football wrapped the season in a 41-0 loss to Rochester Adams in the MHSAA Division 1 Football District 4 Final last Friday.
The Highlanders jumped to a 21-0 lead within a four minute span during the first quarter.
“Credit to them, those guys came out and they were ready to play,” said Clarkston Varsity Football Head Coach Justin Pintar. “It just seemed like we were kind of back on our heels. They ran a little bit different scheme defensively, and we just never seem to kind of get comfortable on offense. Then, defensively we just had a hard time stopping their run game, that’s what they can do. We just came into a buzz saw there in the first quarter and it just seemed like we had a hard time kind of figuring things out after that and regroup and after they scored the first couple times.”
Pintar added the Wolves had some good plays but there were just too many negative plays like when senior Benny Adams caught a touchdown pass from sophomore Alex Waszczenko with 91 seconds left in the first half. But there was a flag on the play against Clarkston for holding.
“There were a couple times where we had some plays, we made some plays or we chipped away and got some yards, but it seemed like whenever we got ourselves into to scoring position something went wrong,” Pintar said. “We had too many negative plays and that was one of the things that we’ve talked about all year is trying to eliminate those negative plays. It certainly wasn’t everything today, but I thought that was a big part of the game was the negative plays.”

The Wolves finished the season with an overall 7-4 record and 2-2 in the OAA Red, sharing second place with Rochester Adams and Lake Orion.
“I told the boys at the end that I was disappointed in the score only because I don’t think it’s reflective of the year that we had and the team that we have,” Pintar shared about the season. “I think a lot of people see that score. It’ll be kind of eye-popping and it looks bad. But this is a good football team that won some very good games this year. They beat a very good Lake Orion team last week, beat a very good Eisenhower team a couple weeks ago. Today, we obviously didn’t play our best. A lot of that has to do with Adams – that’s a very well coached team and that team competes and plays really hard. We just didn’t seem to be able to match them today.”
Before the team walked off the field, all the underclassmen and coaches said goodbye to the seniors with hugs and pats on the back.
“They made it enjoyable to come to practice,” Pintar said about the Class of 2025. “They’re a good group of kids to coach. They listen, There were no behavior issues, there were no attitudes. It was just guys that wanted to come out and play football. You enjoy being able to come to practice every day when you have guys like especially your seniors because there’s no egos. They competed. They loved coming out and playing football. They were just enjoyable to be around on a day-to-day basis. They made it fun. They made they made the season fun.”

  Clarkston Athletics, Football