NCA Jets Dominate Pickford In Final Four Victory

POWERS---The North Central High School football team will have the chance to defend last year's state championship.

The Jets rolled past the Pickford Panthers, 62-22, in the Eight-Man state semifinal game Friday night in Powers. NCA will face the Deckerville Eagles in the state championship game next Friday night in Greenville.

Jets quarterback Jason Whitens threw three touchdown passes and ran in another, while fellow senior Bobby Kleiman scored three touchdowns on the ground and caught one in the air.

Unlike last week's game that saw the Jets miss all but two of their two-point conversion attempts, NCA made seven straight conversions before missing on their final one.

Whitens threw for 221 yards, most of it in the first half, including long touchdowns of 64 and 85 yards to Marcus Krachinski. Whitens' touchdown run on the ground covered 20 yards as the Jets raced to a 40-6 lead at halftime.

Kleiman's touchdown runs on the ground covered two yards (in the first quarter) and 34 and 14 yards in the third quarter. His 34-yard scamper on the team's first posession of the second half made it a 46-6 game and set the mercy-rule running clock in motion.

NCA led, 8-0, after Kleiman's first touchdown run (and a Whitens two-point conversion run), but the Panthers used five minutes off of the clock and scored as touchdown on a 19-yard pass from quarterback Jim Storey to Derrick Edington. That cut it to 8-6.

That would be as close as the Panthers would get, as NCA scored the next 48 points before John LaMothe's two-yard run early in the fourth quarter put Pickford back on the scoreboard. Storey threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to Edington late in the game for Pickford's final score. The Panthers finished their season with a 10-2 record.

NCA (12-0) has won 25 straight Eight-Man football games, and will try to repeat as state champions next Friday night on the turf at Greenville's Legacy Field. Kick-off is set for 7:00 ET/6:00 CT. The game will be broadcast live on WUPF-FM (Eagle 107.3).