MADISON — The Cheesemakers had their opportunities to seal off a Rock Valley Championship, but instead allowed Madison Edgewood to score 18 unanswered points in the fourth quarter and win 31-28 in their Week 9 game at Breese Stevens Field.
“Two good teams playing against each other,” Monroe coach Toby Golembiewski said of the two former Badger Conference rivals. “You know, there’s been years in the Badger South where every week was like that — every game was like this. It was kind of nice to play in a game like this again — other than not being on top in the end.”
The Cheesemakers staff started the night already disgruntled. The tent set-up to serve as a locker room held little privacy, as the Velcro tarp doors didn’t seal. Then there was the radio tower on sight to help power the field for the professional soccer and ultimate frisbee teams — which interfered with Monroe’s headset equipment, forcing the “coaching box” assistants back down to the sidelines.
And that says nothing of a few controversial flags both thrown and not thrown.
“I hope (Edgewood) gets their lights someday, because this is an awful. The flaps on the tent are open where our guys are changing; they have to walk clear over here (to the other side of the field), three at a time to shower; the cell tower knocked out our headsets, so we had no booth communication. They can play all the soccer here they want, but this is garbage, a sham to have to come here and have to play football,” Golembiewski said.
Throw in starting left half back Keatin Sweeney was lost in the third quarter with an injury, and his backup Lucas Flom joining him on the sidelines in the fourth, meant Monroe’s offense was all but cut in half.
“So we’re down to a kid that plays on the freshman team, and another guy that doesn’t get as many reps. We really tried to work around it, but it wasn’t happening,” Golembiewski said. “They did a good job, but we were just down at the end of our rope there.”
JT Seagreaves had a big game for Monroe, rushing for 150 yards and two 50-plus yard TD scores on just 12 carries. He also caught four passes in the second half for 54 yards. Sweeney added 86 yards and two scores on 11 carries before departing. Fullback Alex Hernandez was bottled up inside, gaining just 54 yards on 14 attempts. Kaden Kuester had five carries for 29 yards in a big change-of-pace possession in the third quarter.
In all, Monroe finished with 313 rushing yards and 367 total yards of offense. Edgewood, meanwhile, had 362 yards of offense — with 323 coming off the arm of QB Joe Hartlieb, who was 27 of 46 passing with two scores. In fact, Monroe’s defense bottled up the Crusaders on the ground the entire night — except for a single play in the third quarter, when Jackson Trudgeon followed a huge kick return with a 55-yard TD run on the first snap. On Edgewood’s other 12 rushing attempts, the Crusaders went backwards to the tune of negative-17 yards.
“We put a lot more time into our defense this week. We knew they had a really good offense — I think it was the fourth-best in the state,” said Monroe junior linebacker Tucker Markham. “I thought we did a pretty good job. We held them to six points in the first half, and it really could have gone either way.”
Hartlieb & Co. opened the game with a variety of swing, slant and screen passes. Rarely did the Crusaders go deep, and when they did, Monroe’s defense was able to keep Edgewood in check.
“That screen pass really killed us. We did a really good job getting them to third-and-longs, but they (converted) those screen passes, and that really hurt us. We’ll look at that in the future going ahead and we’ll work on it,” Markham said.
The Cheesemakers made it 28-13 just 32 seconds into the fourth quarter on a 51-yard TD run by Seagreaves. Flom laid a big block on the play, but subsequently left the game injured. Edgewood converted on fourth-and-7 on the next possession while marching down the field en route to a 25-yard pass from Hartlieb to Trudgeon.
Monroe’s next drive went backwards, as back-to-back runs with Hernandez went no where and QB George Brukwicki was sacked on third down. A short punt from Monroe’s end zone gave Edgewood the ball at the Monroe 31, and on the next snap Hartlieb found Cam Fane for a 31-yard score on a post route.
Tied at 28 with under five minutes to play, Monroe had a first down at its own 36. A lineman jumped in reaction to a defensive lineman appearing to jump offsides, but a false start was called instead. Four snaps later, Monroe punted away again, giving Edgewood the ball at the Crusader 39. On the next play, Hartlieb and Fane connected on another 31-yard pass and catch. The Cheesemakers then forced Edgewood into fourth down. Junior kicker Sam Klestinski had an extra point blocked earlier in the game, as well as a missed 39-yard field goal. But with 1:13 left in regulation, he hit a wind-aided 43-yard field goal to put Edgewood ahead.
“We had our chances, but we definitely did not help ourselves,” Golembiewski said. “I know it was a struggle in the fourth quarter, but we probably did more damage to ourselves in the first quarter. And Edgewood is a good team that’s going to answer to that, and you can’t give a good team a lot of second chances.”
Monroe’s final possession, the Cheesemakers ran two running and four pass plays. Brukwicki and Seagreaves connected once for a big 20-yard gain on fourth down, and again for 12 more yards two plays later, but Seagreaves was unable to get out of bounds and the clock hit zeros.
“We really just need to work on our pass defensive. We’ve improved a lot — Edgewood’s really good at passing and we really worked to limit them. I think, looking forward, need to put the hammer down on defense and offense we’ll have to work on our penalties — we killed ourselves on penalties, otherwise I think we would have had them,” Markham said.
Multiple times at key moments in the game the Cheesemakers shot themselves in the foot with a penalty or misplay on special teams.
“We didn’t field some kicks very good — and we were just clumsy at times. There was a couple of times the play was called and the guy that was getting the ball went the wrong way. In each one of those (first half) drives — except for the one we scored on — each one had a drive-ending incident that we were unable to recover from,” Golembiewski said.
Now the second season begins: The playoffs. With the WIAA’s new automatic seeding system, matchups were determined just hours after all Week 9 games went final. Monroe was given the fifth-seed and in Level 1 will travel to Whitnall, located in Greenfield, a southwest Milwaukee suburb.
The Falcons finished the season 6-3 overall and 5-2 in the Woodland Conference. The Falcons run a balanced attack on offense, with a 60/40 split between running and passing plays. Whitnall averages 138 yards rushing reach week and another 116 through the air.
QB Caleb Straughter has 997 yards passing with a 53.9% completion rate. He’s thrown 10 TD passes and 11 INTs. Dominic Greer leads the team in rushing with 574 yards on 94 attempts (6.1 ypc). Straughter has 359 yards on 89 attempts. John Pitta is the team’s top receiving threat, snagging 17 grabs for 389 yards (22.7 ypc) and six scores. Whitnall has outscored opponents 236-171 this season, though has been outscored in the first half 123-113.
Monroe has outscored opponents 325-110, including a 171-63 mark in the first half. The Cheesemakers have thrown for just 262 yards on the season on just 37 attempts, but have gained 3,231 yards rushing on 450 carries — a collective average of 7.2 yards per carry.
Sweeney leads the team with 949 yards on the ground (10.0 ypc), with Hernandez second at 920 (5.5 ypc). Seagreaves has accumulated 761 yards (8.8 ypc).
