By Sue Moore

“It was a great game,” Coach Tom Marchese said after the excitement of winning with only 58 seconds left on the clock in the Friday night Halloween thriller over Three Rivers. A missed extra point by the Wildcats ended the game at 14-13 for a Vicksburg hard-earned victory.

The Bulldogs played stellar defense to stop Three Rivers’ running back and quarterback who had burned them with slicing runs and good passing in their first meeting during regular season play. This time, Vicksburg’s interior line didn’t let up, allowing very few long gains, with a grinding it out style of play on an evening with wind gusts that might have gotten up to 30 mph, according to Marchese.

The passing game consisted of short passes in the flat for both teams until a couple of longer passes that went for points on the board that gave each team an opportunity to win.

The first quarter saw Vicksburg score its first TD with 1:55 left in the quarter on a nifty pass from Dalton Ketelaar for 35 yards to Connor Henderson in the corner of the end zone. After that, the teams exchanged punts several times without getting their ground games going past mid-field.

In the second quarter Three Rivers started on Vicksburg’s 27 yard line after punts into the wind fell short. A penalty moved the ball to the eight-yard line and the Wildcats ran the ball right into the end zone for a 7-7 tie. Vicksburg’s defense came alive when a Three Rivers punt was fumbled and the Wildcats took over with a first and goal to go. A Three Rivers penalty pushed the ball back to the 22-yard line and a fourth and 20 saw a desperate pass into the end zone broken up by Caleb Kudary. The teams went into the locker room tied at the half.

Three Rivers came out on the attack after the half and drove downfield on its opening possession to Vicksburg’s 17 when the defense again stopped them from scoring. Vicksburg took over on its own 17 with Nick Wallace running hard and Ketelaar scrambling to keep the drive alive that eventually stalled. A long pass to Brenden Lovell took the Bulldogs to the Three Rivers 30, but they couldn’t punch it in and punted to the 18 where Three Rivers took over.

The visitors couldn’t move the ball much farther and an attempted punt from about the 20 was blocked by Henderson. The Bulldogs still couldn’t capitalize as they kept going backwards with penalties that hurt them and hard tackling by the Wildcats.

Late in the fourth quarter, Vicksburg started its winning drive from the 50 with Wallace advancing the ball to the 23 with some hard running. Ketelaar rolled out to his left and let go a quick pass to Hunter Van for a completion to the eight-yard line. This time Wallace took the ball over with 3:55 left in the game. It was time for the defense to get tough when Three Rivers got the ball on its own 25.

Instead the momentum started turning Three Rivers way with a tricky reverse play that took them to the 47 of Vicksburg, with Henderson making a saving tackle with 1:46 left. The Three Rivers quarterback completed a desperation scoring pass to his wide receiver to score with 58 seconds left on the scoreboard. The snap for the extra point try was fumbled and the game ended with Vicksburg taking a knee on the fifty yard line after recovering an onside kick by the Wildcats.

The next playoff game will be at Edwardsburg which advanced on a win over Paw Paw. They will play on Friday, November 7 at 7 p.m. Vicksburg beat the Eddies in an early home game in September.

By Sue Moore

“Football is a physical game. It’s the only place where hitting is legal,” said Dan Karn, a Vicksburg High School player from the 2010 football team that earned a playoff berth. Karn is now a reserve linebacker at Kalamazoo College along with his Vicksburg teammates from 2010, Aaron McGuire and BJ Cagney.

McGuire was the quarterback on the VHS team that went 6-3; Cagney was the center and Karn a linebacker. McGuire and Cagney are now senior starters on the Kalamazoo College football team that is having some troubles getting on track this season. The three have been playing together for eight years, beginning with Rocket teams, freshmen, junior varsity and varsity in Vicksburg, under the tutelage of Tom Marchese Vicksburg’s head coach for six seasons.

“These kids have stuck together [all these years],” said Marchese. “They come back, lift weights with the younger guys, and are just great kids to have had in the program. McGuire is coachable, selfless, with a team first [mentality]. He set the tone five years ago for Vicksburg and has succeeded at the next level. He gives his full effort. BJ has that farm kid strength and is no nonsense guy. They all have great character.”

That shows at the next level with Karn and Cagney listed as academic All Americans at K, and McGuire sporting a high scholastic average. McGuire and Cagney spent a semester in Spain as their study abroad, living with families in Madrid who didn’t speak any English. Karn stayed home to major in organic chemistry and plans to graduate a semester early, hopefully to land a job in the plastics industry involving large production.

Cagney says he is straight off the farm. That had its advantages because he could recruit his teammates to help bale hay in the summer, giving them good paying jobs and providing the guys lots of conditioning work while hard at it. He intends to graduate from K with a degree in business and marketing, with an emphasis on finance. An internship with Imperial Beverage last year gave him a good start, he said.

McGuire hopes his days of quarterbacking will take him to a job in real estate investments once he gets his degree in business and marketing next spring. Meanwhile, he is playing well as the starting quarterback but injured his knee during the Olivet game last week.

“Our coach, Jamie Zorbo, has an infectious personality,” McGuire said. “He wants to win, is intense, and personable.” Cagney made his first recruiting visit to Kalamazoo College and then to Hope and Albion, but nobody beat the feeling he had from the K coaches.

They each received academic aid, but there are no athletic scholarships at Division III schools, of which K is one. A new athletic facility has been built and opened officially during the four years these guys have been in school. It includes soccer, baseball and softball fields, training room, and an elaborate locker room facility to help with recruiting.

“I’ve always wanted to play football and I will miss it,” McGuire said, noting that it’s time to move on. “No more body aches and pains perhaps. It does hurt a little more than it used to. It’s the miles of training and playing that means it takes a few more days each week to recover. I find I’m still limping around until Wednesday, when I used to be just walking around.”

They all agreed they need to get out in the work force first and start making some money to pay back their student loans before deciding upon graduate school.

By Nathan Czochara

On Thanksgiving Day, wild turkey hunters in Southwest Michigan should give thanks to two Vicksburg residents, Gary Van Dyke and Tony Decker, members of Southwestern Michigan Long Beards, a local chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation. VanDyke is president and Decker the treasurer of this group of wild turkey hunters who pursue the conservation of turkey populations and natural habitats across North America.

The National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF), founded in 1973 in Edgefield, SC, is the largest upland game conservation organization in the U.S., spending $412 million conserving 17.25 million acres of habitat. Michigan has 80 chapters.

The Southwestern Michigan Long Beards, which includes Kalamazoo County, was founded by Van Dyke in 1986. The chapter was the first in the United States to become Diamond Life Sponsor in the Federation by giving over $10,000 to the national fund of the NWTF.

“We were the first chapter ever to do a NWTF sanctioned banquet in the state of Michigan in 1988,” said VanDyke. “Through our banquet program, completing 29 banquets, we have raised $1,019,349. We are the only chapter in the United States to accomplish this.”

Besides the fundraising accomplishments, the Long Beards have made huge strides in conservation of wild turkeys and other wildlife in the county and across the state. Working with other organizations like the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and other NWTF chapters, the group has helped fund the trapping of wild turkeys to replant them in Kalamazoo County and other areas in Michigan. The chapter has been a part of the repopulation of trees, pheasants, and other wildlife in Michigan.

“We gave turkeys to Ontario, and they gave us moose, to help repopulate the Upper Peninsula,” said Van Dyke.

“The shining moment is every time I see a wild turkey, and hear people talk how many turkeys they see,” he said. “It makes you feel good inside because when we first started there weren’t that many here. That is a shining moment that I relive on a daily basis.”