By Wendi Reardon Price
Staff Writer
wprice@mihomepaper.com
CLARKSTON — The Wolves were victorious in their home opener against Oxford Varsity Football last Friday, 23-15.
“Tonight was a great OAA Red battle,” said Clarkston Varsity Football Head Coach Justin Pintar. “Two teams that play hard and compete, and play the right way. Hats off to Oxford, they gave us everything we could handle.”
He shared the Wolves knew going in they would have to be ready for everyone and not just a few key players especially with a group with 24 returning seniors.
“They play really hard. Their safeties and corners can tackle and that makes a huge difference in the run,” Pintar said. “Some teams if you can get past the front six or seven, the defensive backs don’t want to tackle. Those guys do. Those guys play hard and they’re coached up well, so it’s not necessarily one guy when you play Oxford they’re just a good balance team that you know you’ve got to be able to execute.”

The Wolves opened with control of the ball and finished the drive with a 49-yard field goal made by junior kicker Aidan O’Neill with 5:49 in the first quarter, 3-0.
Oxford was the next to score with 31.9 seconds remaining in the second quarter with a 52-yard touchdown run from senior Owen Pavlock. A PAT from senior Drew Cady, put the Wildcats up 7-3.
“The touchdown right before half was kind of a tough way to go into halftime,” Pintar said. “We didn’t let that bother us and effect us. We pitched the shout out in the second half at least on the defensive side.”
Clarkston took control of the score six minutes into the second half. Sophomore Alex Waszczenko handed the ball to junior running back Griffin Boman, who took off and finished a 65-yard run in the end zone for a touchdown. O’Neill’s PAT attempt was a success and the Wolves took a 10-7 lead.
The Wolves built onto their lead with a 7-yard touchdown run from junior running back Lukas Boman, five seconds into the fourth quarter. A PAT from O’Neill put Clarkston up 17-7.
With 1:54 left in the game, senior wide receiver Brady Beck scored on a 5-yard touchdown run. Oxford blocked O’Neill’s PAT, putting the Wolves up 23-7.
“I thought in the second half, we cleaned up some things,” Pintar shared. “We executed a little better, made a little bit of adjustments on how we wanted to run things and that helped a lot on offense and then our defense, they played outstanding all night. I was proud as I could be about how we competed tonight and how we executed in the second half.”
Pavlock caught the kickoff return for the Wildcats and returned it for a 98-yard touchdown run. A 2-point conversion completed by Cady closed the gap, 23-15.
The Wolves (2-1, 1-0 OAA Red) head to Rochester Adams (3-0, 1-0) this Friday as the Wildcats (1-2, 0-1) host Lake Orion (3-0).
“I know from history Adams is a very well coached team,” Pintar said. “Coach (Tony) Patritto always has those guys ready to go. It’ll be a lot like tonight. They’re going to compete hard. It’s the OAA Red – there’s no easy games in this league. I expect another game a lot like tonight where it’s going to be back and forth. Hopefully we come out on top like with it tonight.”
Pintar shared many of the Wolves’ strengths includes everyone contributing on both sides and having more than a few key players.
“It’s something that makes it makes it harder on other teams when they don’t necessarily know who the guy is,” Pintar said. “We have the ability to rest and rotate Lukas and Griffin as running back. Then, Trey Setter can come in and give those guys some rest and does a good job, too. We can rotate three backs in there. We have the ability to run with our halfback, with our tight end, we can go four wide. We can do a lot of different things. We have different receivers we can get the ball to. This is probably a little bit more of a smash mouth football game and a little less of the passing stuff.”
“We can do a little bit of everything,” he added. “In week one, we had to throw the ball. Then, in week two we were able to kind of do a little bit of both. Today, we leaned on the run a little bit more. This is a really balanced team and that’s what makes them dangerous is teams are gonna have to figure out what they want to stop and same thing defensively. We’ve got 11 guys that played really well together.”

  Clarkston Athletics, Football