By TIM IRVING
“I’m not sure how exciting it was for everybody else to watch.”
Livonia football coach Chris Genthner only cared about the final result with his Bulldogs pulling out a 6-0 win over Le Roy in the final game of the regular season.
After a scoreless first quarter, the Oatkan Knights, playing on Hartwood Field for the first time this season, tried to get something going with Alex Panepento hitting Cody Lytle. The senior tried to make some extra yardage, suffering a lower leg injury and missing the rest of the game.
The Bulldogs responded with a couple of passes to tight end Steffan Gwyn and used up most of the second quarter clock, only to turn the ball over on downs with 15 seconds left in the half.
In the third quarter, Panepento started finding some running room and found Adam Risewick for a 30-yard gain in a drive the ended the third quarter and started the fourth.
But on third down, Panepento’s pass was intercepted by Alex Minnehan and that set Livonia up to try and kill the rest of the fourth quarter clock.
“I wanna chew a lot of clock and hopefully score without giving them too much time to make a move on us,” said Genthner.
Minnehan then took over on the ground, leading the Bulldogs into the red zone.
“We just really dug deep, everybody on the sidelines, our fans made a lot of noise,” Minnehan said.
On fourth down, Minnehan completed just his fourth pass of the day, hitting Jake Smith who got up the sideline to the 11-yard line.
Minnehan then had runs of six and four yards to set up first and goal from the one, where he dove in with 45.7 seconds left.
After a good return from Nate Andrews, Panepento had the Knights moving but with six seconds left, it looked like Livonia locked it up when Kevin Travis intercepted a pass but Livonia was called for a personal foul, giving the Oatkan Knights another chance.
Panepento’s pass over the middle was knocked down by Smith and Livonia held on.
Minnehan finished with 100 yards rushing, eclipsing the 1,000 yard plateau in the process.
The win secures a home game for the Bulldogs in the Class C semifinals, potentially a rematch with Le Roy on Friday at Livonia.
“It’s nice, it’s important that us seniors are gonna get one more game at home, “ Minnehan says, “but we’ve still gotta take care of business, just because you’re at home, nothing’s given to you.”
“Getting to wear the blue jerseys, that means a lot to our guys, that’s a real symbol for them and I’m really happy that they get to do that.”
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