Darren Lee
The Verona Wildcats, here in their win over Hartland Arrowhead, will take on Badger High School in Round 2 action.
Teams from 10 Dane County high schools qualified for the first round of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association’s football playoffs, but only five made it past the first round of games on Oct. 21.
Verona rallied from a 14-0 deficit in the first quarter to beat Hartland Arrowhead, 21-17, in front of a hometown crowd at the Wildcats’ Curtis Jones Field. Longtime followers of Division 1 football probably recall that only a few years ago, Arrowhead was considered among the state’s elite teams, winning championships in 2012 and 2013, and finishing runner-up in 2014 and 2015.
Verona will meet Badger High School in Lake Geneva in Round 2 action Oct. 28 at 7 p.m.
Another big first-round game involved the Division 1 sectional’s No. 1 seed Sun Prairie and No. 8 Madison La Follette, in a rematch of the previous week’s regular-season finale. The Cardinals won that game, 31-7, but the Lancers invaded Ashley Field and embarrassed Sun Prairie, 40-13, to move on. La Follette senior quarterback Julian Patton blasted the game wide open in the third quarter with three touchdown runs — two of them for more than 60 yards.
La Follette plays Middleton, which escaped Oconomowoc with a 20-13 round-one victory, at Breitenbach Stadium on Oct. 28 at 7 p.m.
If La Follette, Middleton or Verona continues the march to Camp Randall and the state title game on Nov. 18, there’s a good chance one of them will face three-time defending champion Kimberly (Division 2 in 2013 and Division 1 the past two seasons). The Papermakers, who haven’t lost a game since 2012, obliterated Milwaukee Vincent/Destiny, 78-0, in this year’s first round.
In Division 2 playoff action, No. 1 seed Waunakee wiped out No. 8 DeForest, 42-7; Monona Grove beat Waterford, 24-14; and Waukesha West shut out Stoughton, 35-0. Marshall, Dane County’s only other representative in the state playoffs, fell hard to Clinton, 42-14, in Division 5.
Blowout wins. Tough losses. This is what high school football in late October and early November is all about. Longtime rivalries can take on new life, and major upsets can rattle the brackets.
And sometimes — as Verona senior outside linebacker Jared Grassman noted after the Wildcats’ come-from-behind win — motivation can turn to inspiration. He told the Wisconsin State Journal the team was playing for starting offensive lineman Colin Van Altena, who broke his leg earlier that week in a trampoline accident. “He’s one of my best friends,” Grassman said. “We wanted it for him.”
