The Becker Bulldog football team advanced to the Section 5AAAA final with a big win over Delano Saturday at home by a score of 40-7. The Bulldogs faced Orono at home Friday night for a chance to advance to the state tournament starting Nov. 8 at St. Cloud State University.
The Bulldogs dominated Saturday’s game from start to finish, only giving up the one TD late in the game when the contest was already decided.
Six different Bulldog players scored TDs with QB Michael Veldman completing three TDs on 11-of-16 passing for 208 yards. Running Back C.J.
Schwintek had one of those TD scores on the ground and he finished with 198 yards rushing on 22 carries.
Eric Blomgren caught one TD pass from Veldman and amassed 123 yards through the air on five catches.
It didn’t take Becker long to establish themselves as the better team when they took the opening kickoff and marched 75 yards for the first score of the game within three minutes. Veldman found Dawson Brown from 23 yards out to put the home team up by seven before Delano even touched the ball.
After a quick three-and-out from Delano, Becker got the ball back at their own 34. Six plays later, Beau Pauly took a handoff and rambled nine yards to paydirt to put the score at 13-0 (extra point failed).
Becker would go on to score three more times before halftime when Blomgren caught a 19-yard pass from Veldman to make it 19-0 and Milan Kent scored from seven yards out to push the lead to 26-0. The score would grow to 33-0 at half when Adam Rasmussen carried the ball from the three to complete a very successful first half.
Schwintek would score the final TD for Becker with 29 seconds left in the third quarter and the Bulldogs gave up a late TD to Delano with six minutes left in the game to make the final 40-7.
Becker finished with 496 total yards of offense, including 288 yards on the ground compared to just 115 total offense from Delano. Becker had 208 passing yards compared to just 18 fro the Tigers and had 23 first downs compared to 10 for Delano.
On defense, Becker’s Pauly, Nathan Voigt and Dillon Radunz led the team with five tackles each. Pauly also had two sacks.
