The Becker Bulldog football team played a nearly perfect first half last week as they completely destroyed the Little Falls Flyers in Saturday’s Class 4A, Section 8 semifinal game and coerced a mercy call from the Flyers coaches after the first 24 minutes.

Jumping ahead to a 49-0 halftime lead summons the Minnesota State High School League to call for the mercy rule — or running time — whenever a team leads by 35 points in the fourth quarter. However, the Flyers coaches agreed to start the running time even before the second half commenced.

Becker would eventually win by a score of 56-14.

Sophomore quarterback Tristan Kowalkowski had a superb game, tossing three touchdown passes before halftime. The first score was a 13-yard TD score to Carter Reckelberg to go up 7-0 less than two minutes into the contest. Soon thereafter, the Bulldogs went up 14-0 when Landen Kujawa rambled into the end zone from 16 yards out at the 10 minute mark. 

Kowalkowski found Mitchell Soltau from eight yards out four minutes later and Cody Klatt crossed the goal line from eight yards out with 1:50 left in the first quarter to put Becker up by a score of 28-0.

But they weren’t quite done... Isaac Daluge broke free from midfield and out raced everyone to the end zone just a minute later to make the first quarter score, 35-0.

Becker “eased” up in the second quarter, scoring just two TDs when Daluge scored from five yards out with a little more than two minutes left and then Kowalkowski dropped another TD score to Soltau with 26 seconds to go to bring the score to 49-0 at the break.

That’s when mercy was called.

The Bulldogs sent in the second stringers almost immediately and despite that, they managed another score in the third when K. Tomasko plunged into the end zone for Becker’s final score at 6:29.

Little Falls managed to score twice in the fourth quarter on a touchdown run from senior running back Luke Avery and a touchdown pass from quarterback Gavin Anderson to fellow senior receiver Derrick Young.

Kowalkowski finished six-of-12 for 145 yards and three scores. Owen Angell carried the workload at running back as he amassed 66 yards on eight carries.

Soltau led the receivers with four catches for 104 yards and two TDs.

Kaden Nicolas led all defenders with eight tackles and one sack. Cody Deters had five tackles and one sack and Klatt had six tackles.

The victory means No. 1 seeded Becker (10-0) advances to play No. 2 seed Princeton (9-0), the winner of Saturday’s other semifinal, on Friday at St. Michael-Albertville High School. Game time is set for 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1 at STMA.