Ugly or not, Petoskey football ends season opener in victory formation

PETOSKEY — There's not exactly anything pretty about an 8-6 football game.

That is, unless you’re the team with eight and lined up in victory formation at the end.

Pretty, ugly and every way in-between, the Petoskey football team will take it for their season opener on Friday night against Greenville, when a defensive slugfest – that was indeed ugly at times – ended in an 8-6 win for the Northmen.

It was the kind of defensive performance Petoskey head coach Jim Webb has almost come to expect out of his talented unit, even in a season opener.

“Absolutely,” Webb said. “They’ve shown it all year long. They’ve been awesome. That’s one thing that’s helping us offensively is going against that defense every day. We tell our guys, ‘This is one of the best defenses in Northern Michigan.’”

While they gave up a couple long drives to Greenville and just one chunk play, Petoskey’s defense was as good as advertised and looks poised for another big season.

Senior linebacker Logan LaHaie totaled 13 tackles, Drew Olson came through with seven, one for a loss and an interception and Haden Janes made eight stops and broke up three key passes. Mario Graham also had six tackles, as did Wyatt Hahn.

Here’s some other things that stood out Friday night.

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Offense has some catching up to do

As good as the defense looked, the offense looked like it was breaking in a new quarterback and tweaking the system just a bit.

Petoskey totaled just 215 yards of offense – though Greenville couldn’t muster much more – with quarterback Korbin Sulitis leading with 20 carries for 102 yards and a touchdown. He also went 7 of 17 passing for 58 yards, then had a fumble and interception.

Petoskey’s Mitch Eberhart then had six catches for 48 yards and ran three times for 19 yards.

That was about it. But, Webb knew there would be some catching up to do offensively.

“We put it on our linemen to begin with that we have to be able to run the football,” Webb said. “With Korbin being a physical runner, that’s going to be a big part of our game all year long. We just hope it’ll help the passing game once that gets connected. It’ll be huge for us to be able to run and then strike with Mitch and Seth (Marek) out there.

“Defense did good, the offense has to catch up.”

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Some adversity faced

If the score didn’t already give it away, things didn’t exactly go Petoskey’s way throughout the night.

They lost the turnover battle 2-1. They twice had the ball in the redzone and came up empty, including once inside the five. Then they dodged a bullet late, as Greenville’s Case Johnson broke off a 50 yard run with just over two minutes remaining, only to be stopped from behind by Petoskey’s Kaiden Boyce.

Greenville nearly fumbled the ball away on the next play, backed themselves up a bit, then Petoskey made plays in the secondary from there, with Janes breaking up the final pass that led to victory formation.

“They got that long run at the end of the game and we could have let our heads drop, but they just fought through it,” Webb said. “This group is competitive. It’s been that way every year for them and they’re going to fight until the end. That’s all you can ask for.”

Looked like an opener

Some things happen in openers that just make you scratch your head.

For Greenville, that came in the form of eight pre-snap penalties. False starts, encroachments and illegal formations haunted the Yellow Jackets throughout the game and aided Petoskey. One came on Petoskey's extra point attempt, which turned out to be the difference with the Northmen then going for two and converting.

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Petoskey had their own oddity when senior running back Brendan Swiss was called for a hurdling penalty – which is a 15-yard unsportsmanlike – in the second half. It backed Petoskey up from the five to the 20 and eventually led to zero points. As odd of a call as that sounds, Webb has seen it before.

“Yeah, I have,” he said. “It was close, but we went back and looked at it and it was hurdling.”

Either way, Petoskey will leap into Week 2 with a 1-0 record and remain at home by hosting Bay City Western (1-0) on Friday, Sept. 6.

Check back for another story on a member of the Petoskey defense early next week.

Contact or send game stats/info to Sports Editor Drew Kochanny at dkochanny@petoskeynews.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DrewKochanny, and Instagram, @drewkochanny

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Ugly or not, Petoskey football ends season opener in victory formation