The Nanih Waiya football team will be glad to be back at home on Friday night, as they celebrate Homecoming against Hamilton High School.
The Warriors, ranked No. 1 in MHSAA Class 1A in several polls, improved to 6-2 last week with a 42-31 road non-division win over Bruce on Friday night. Nanih Waiya now enters a three-game stretch — four of which are a home — of Region 2-1 games as they look to close out the region schedule undefeated once again and grab a top seed for the MHSAA Class 1A Football Playoffs that will begin on Nov. 15.
Nanih Waiya leads the division with a perfect 4-0 mark, followed by West Lowndes and Noxapater who are each 4-1. Those two teams clash in Noxapater on Friday night. NW owns wins over both of those schools.
NW head football coach James Courtney says if his Warriors can get some of their injured players back — at least one of which he expects to return this week — and can get better at closing out games he expects his team to be ready to roll when the playoffs come around.
“If we can get healthy and keep improving we feel like we are in a position to reach the goals we set for ourselves before the season began,” he said.
The Warriors jumped out to multi-touchdown leads against Bruce three times, but kept letting the Trojans back into the game.
“We have got to get better every week and we did not get better Friday night,” Courtney said. “We didn’t finish well. We were up 42-19 with five minutes left and gave up two touchdowns late.”
The Warriors led 16-0 after one quarter of play thanks to a safety, Austin Sanders’ 45-yard return of the ensuing free kick and Tylan Glass’ interception return for a touchdown. Hagan Halfacre knocked through a pair of extra points.
“We were up 16-0 and had barely even run an offensive play,” Courtney said.
Bruce cut it to 16-6, before the Warriors opened the lead to 28-6 with a 3-yard touchdown pass from Donovan Turner to J.T. Stokes at the end of the second quarter and Turner’s 4-yard scoring run to begin the third.
The end of the third quarter belonged to Bruce however, as the homestanding Trojans scored on touchdown runs of 45 and 58 yards.
Fourth-quarter touchdown runs of 4 yards by Sanders and 5 yards by Dawson Eaves and a two-point conversion run by Sanders made it 42-19. But Bruce scored on a 33-yard pass play, then recovered the onside kick with led to a 7-yard touchdown run, to cut the final margin to 11 points.
Turner hit on 9-of-18 passes for 158 yards and a touchdown, while rushing for 83 yards on 11 carries. Sanders had seven carries for 78 yards, while Devean Turner rushed for 68 yards on 13 attempts. Glass had four catches for 72 yards, while Sanders and Stokes had two catches each and Blake Young had one for 29.
Glass and Young each had interceptions for the Warriors as well.
