MONROE — For a lot of teams, Homecoming week can be a distraction. Pep rallies, dances, parades — it can all add up to a moment or two of a lack of focus that could derail a team.
That was nearly the case in Week 5 for 10th-ranked Monroe, which played a sloppy first half and went into halftime trailing winless Edgerton. During the extended intermission, players and coaches found a way to motivate, energize and refocus on the game. The result was a dominating second half and a 28-7 win for the Cheesemakers at TR Holyoke Field Sept. 17.
“Your own self can be your biggest opponent at times,” Monroe coach Toby Golembiewski said. “We questioned them at half: Is there anything that you’re seeing or that we are asking you to do that you didn’t do in practice? Because then we’ll check it off the list right now and move on to something else. Everyone said ‘no.’ With all the pre-snap penalties; we’ve never held that many times; we were going the wrong way; not doing the right block — just head-up-your-butt maneuvers. So we made corrections and we eliminated hot spots. People that were struggling, we eliminated them from the point of attack.”
The series of miscues in the first half included a drive with three Monroe penalties in five snaps, a bobbled handoff and several missed blocking assignments on offense. Defensively, the Cheesemakers remained formidable outside of a few of passing plays. On Edgerton’s first drive, facing 3rd-and-14, Monroe safety Aaron Roidt jumped the passing route but dropped the interception, with nothing but green ahead of him.
Two possessions later, on the second-to-last play in the first quarter, Edgerton QB Braden Troeger hit Shane Kisting on an out-route, with Kisting breaking a pair of tackles along the sideline. Three snaps into the second quarter, the Tiders were facing a 4th-and-3 from the 20, but Troeger hit Kisting on a quick seem curl, and an over-pursuit by Roidt led to a missed tackle and a 20-yard score to put Edgerton ahead at the 11:17 mark in the second.
“They had a good play,” Golembiewski said of Edgerton. “I’ve been on that end of it, where you come in with a different set of records, but you get your kids to believe, and then they work to do something to get themselves to believe. Then that 4-0 team might get a little bit of ‘the sky is falling’ and it opens the door at the end. But we stayed patient, did our job and just went about it more businessman-like.
It took Monroe two more possessions to get on the board. Wisconsin-commit JT Seagreaves was slated to sit out the game on the offensive side of the ball to rest an ankle injury suffered in the win over Jefferson in Week 4, but after three lackluster drives by the Cheesemaker offense, he returned — playing multiple positions on the drive. He had two runs (5 and 14 yards), which added a spark to the offense, and was a key blocker on multiple others.
“We were a little slow to start. It was multiple things: Blocking schemes, people not playing hard enough. When I got back in there, I felt like I brought some energy and helped our team run a little better,” Seagreaves said.
Lucas Flom capped the 7-play, 76-yard drive with a 17-yard TD run with 3:33 left before halftime. A missed extra point left Monroe (4-1. 3-0 Rock Valley) trailing Edgerton (0-5, 0-3) 7-6.
“We weren’t into it. We were definitely into getting around; winning the ball. It was just really slow. We started off really slow and penalties were killing us,” junior fullback Alex Hernandez said. “The coaches told us that we needed to focus if we wanted to win this game. We rallied as a team, and this (the win) was the result.”
Monroe opened the second half with a quick 3-and-out on defense, but needed to burn a timeout on fourth down because of personnel issues.
“Clean it up!” Golembiewski yelled aloud to his players both on the sideline and in the huddle, in one last plea to refocus.
The players obliged.
On Monroe’s ensuing possession, the Cheesemakers marched down the field 69 yards on eight plays. Seagreaves, the Homecoming King, had runs of 4, 13 and 5 yards. Keatin Sweeney, the team’s leading rusher this season, added option pickups of 14 and 16 yards, while Hernandez had a strongman run of 14 yards and capped the drive with a 3-yard plunge into the end zone — the first touchdown of his career.
“It was a great emotion — everybody is here for homecoming and you get on the board for the first time of the year — it’s an amazing feeling,” said Hernandez, who cited the help of John Ditter for his strong return from a knee injury that kept him out of the spring season. Hernandez was also humbled by his touchdown, and took to heart that the score was less about his personal achievement, but more for the benefit of his team, as the TD gave Monroe the lead. “We struggled in the first half, and knowing that I contributed to picking up the pace a little bit and helping my teammates get out of the slump, it’s an amazing feeling and something I can’t describe.”
A two-point conversion run by Seagreaves made it 14-7. Edgerton’s next drive looked promising, especially thanks to a deep 30-yard catch along the sideline by Kister. Two snaps later, Edgerton’s Ethan Stengel alligator armed a pitch — and was promptly decleated by Liam Hermanson — fumbling the ball, which was recovered by Monroe’s Tucker Markham at the Cheesemaker 35.
Seven plays later, Monroe capped the 65-yard drive with another score, this time Sweeney crossed the goal line from nine yards out. A Seagreaves 2-point run made It 22-7 with 45 seconds left in the third quarter.
“I would say as a coach that this is going to be a good rivalry. I would like to think we could beat them every year, but looking back realistically, in the course of a 10-year period, I think they will be a competitive school. They’ve been up (conference champs in 2019) and they’ve been down — they are down right now. They had to play a lot of young guys tonight,” Golembiewski said. “They have a coach that is an older guy and understands defending 3-back stuff, and those are the guys you have to watch for,” he said, referencing the general inclination of younger coaches to run a spread offense.
After another Edgerton punt, Monroe again had possession at their own 14. Sweeney dashed up the sideline for 23 yards on the first snap, and gained 31 yards two plays later. Sophomore Kaden Kuester replaced Hernandez at fullback for the drive, giving the junior a breather. Kuester had runs of 10, 9 and 4 on the possession, scoring his first touchdown with 6:40 left.
Kuester began the season on the junior varsity, but due to a couple of injuries on the defensive line and some backfield players with nagging injuries, was given a chance over the past few weeks. He’s made the most of his opportunity, and has seen ample time both on defense and on offense.
“One of our players got hurt, so I had to step up,” Kuester said. “I played hard and finally got the call at fullback and just did my thing — ran hard and played my best.”
Hernandez is one of Kuester’s biggest fans, and sees his backups success as a sign of the strength and direction of the team.
“I feel so much more at ease knowing he’s capable of playing varsity football,” Hernandez said.
“He is a little more of a runner like Trevor Rodebaugh,” Golembiewski said of Kuester, referencing the former Cheesemaker sprinter that led the Badger South in rushing in 2019. “We’ve had to rely on him to fill in on defense, and maybe by the end of the year he’ll be able to get more looks like that, because he did a pretty good job.”
Chase Stoerp then redeemed himself from a first-half miscue. The Cheesemakers had forced Edgerton into a punting situation with just under a minute to play in the second quarter, and with the wind at their back and Seagreaves a major receiving threat, it appeared Monroe would get the ball back — except Stoerp jumped offsides, giving Edgerton a first down and a chance to run out the clock.
Fast forward to the final 200 seconds of the fourth quarter, when Stoerp made an adjustment on the ball and picked off Troeger on Edgerton’s following drive, all but sealing the game. Kuester then put the Tiders away with runs of 8, 39, 9 and 2 on the next four snaps, taking the clock down to the final seconds. Monroe QB George Brukwicki knelt down for the game’s final play.
After shaking hands at midfield, Monroe’s players made a dash toward the packed home bleachers to sing the fight song, which has become a weekly tradition for the program. The Homecoming crowd was one of the largest for the school in nearly 20 years.
“It felt awesome,” Seagreaves said of playing in front of the packed crowd. “I know we had Homecoming going on, but it was still a lot of fun with the crowd and all the activities going on.”
Sweeney finished the game with 153 yards rushing on 13 carries. Hernandez gained 96 yards on 17 touches, while Seagreaves had 55 yards rushing, Flom 34 and Kuester 70. Brukwicki was 0-for-2 passing, but the Cheesemakers outgained Edgerton in offensive yards, 403-130. In the second half, Monroe gained 268 yards alone to Edgerton’s 34.
“I think it was a little bit of the blocking schemes, cleaning some stuff up, and also knowing that this was our homecoming and we had to come out with energy. I think we really got after it in the second half,” Seagreaves said.
Up next for Monroe is East Troy (1-4, 1-2). A win over the Trojans would clinch a postseason birth for the Cheesemakers, but Golembiewski said his team isn’t worried about the playoffs yet — instead taking the season game-by-game.
“We’re not even talking about that at all. We’ll get our nine games in, and let everybody add it all up at the end,” Golembiewski said of the postseason. “In the back of our mind we want to compete for a conference title, but none of that happens for sure without a win next week.”
East Troy has struggled in the first quarter this season, being held scoreless over five games. While the Trojans rush 62% of the time, 62% of their offense come in the passing game. However, East Troy has thrown eight combined interceptions between quarterbacks Ryan Weed and Jon Gulig. Weed, who accounts for more than 90% of the team’s passing yards, is also the team’s leading rusher, gaining 144 on the season.
Meanwhile Monroe is a run-heavy club that rarely puts the ball in the air. The Cheesemakers have gained 1,700 yards on the ground this season to just 84 passing. Sweeney has 579 yards rushing and 10 TDs, while Hernandez has 453 yards on 91 attempts. Seagreaves (347) and Flom (263) also have more rushing yards individually than any Trojan player. In fact, all four Monroe runners have averaged more than 5 yards per carry this season on more than 30 totes.
After the Week 6 game against East Troy, Monroe faces Evansville (3-2, 2-1) in Week 7 at TR Holyoke Field, then McFarland (2-3, 2-1) in Week 8. Should the Cheesemakers win all three games, there is a likelihood that the Week 9 game against Edgewood (5-0, 3-0), another former Badger South program, would be for the Rock Valley championship.
“We have to keep having good weeks of practice,” Hernandez said. “Every single week we come out back behind these bleachers and put our hearts and souls into this game because we want to win. We want to make it to Camp Randall. We have big plans for the future.”
