 The Bemidji football team, one game away from the prep bowl, the only team in their way, undefeated St. Thomas Academy and their powerful rushing attack. Low scoring game to start, cadets score on a field goal and safety to lead by five. Then Bemidji strikes, Jacob Bieberg scrambling around, hits Cade Peterson for the 13 yard score and Bemidji takes the lead seven to five. 13-7 cadets now, Brendan McFadden came into the game with 34 touchdowns on the year. He added a few more breaks through for a 32 yard touchdown. He would score next on a 71 yard run. Then the cadets show that they can pass to Charlie Fafinski to Joe Diak for a 57 yard touchdown. St. Thomas takes a 33-7 lead, but the Lumberjack showed a lot of fighting them. In the fourth, Caleb Grant muscles his way through some hard tackles for the score. And the time winding down, 33-14 now. Bieberg finds Zach Justice, makes a cut, lunges across for the touchdown, but time just runs out on Bemidji. They fall 33 to 21, outrushed 257 to 98 as Bemidji just couldn't get its powerful ground game going. But the Jacks play to full four quarters, never showing any quit. They just found a way to take out our star players and on their keying in on that and then looking at formations and stuff like that, you can really tell they studied their film. You always talk family and you always talk, you preach togetherness and unity. But these guys believed it. And if you were around them for just a little while, you knew that they loved each other and it was really special. So it didn't surprise me that they continued to battle. Coming out of my sophomore year, we went one and eight and just being able to get here is proving to our guys that if you work hard, you can get here. And it doesn't take a special team, it takes just a hard work team. If you work hard, you can get here. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS. Thank you.