Montague football sees winning mentality, if not winning results, in tough loss to Forest Hills Eastern

MONTAGUE — Physically, not much separated Montague and Forest Hills Eastern in their season-opening tussle Thursday night. The difference, as you might expect given the teams' relative experience level with their coaches, was in execution.

The Wildcats, in their first game under Phil Koops, played very hard and fought for 48 minutes, but some key penalties and a couple of clutch plays by the Hawks on a huge fourth-quarter drive proved to be the difference in a 26-14 FHE win.

The Hawks were also in their first game under a new head coach, Tim McGee, though McGee had previously been an assistant, so there was more continuity on their sideline.

Montague struggled with pre-snap penalties right from the start, as the first play ended in a false start penalty and then a timeout to follow. A handful more such infractions occurred throughout the game, which Koops called "drive killers."

"We had some missed reads," Koops said. "We had some missed blocks. We had a running back go the wrong way. We had people lining up in the wrong formation. We had all these things that you just can't get into any kind of offensive rhythm."

A lot was going against Montague even prior to the game. Projected running back rotation Devlin Dean and Fletcher Thommen turned into a compromised Thommen after suffering a minor ankle injury during a joint practice with Spring Lake earlier this week and no Dean, as he was also injured. That pressed sophomore Dane Roesler, who Koops said "did a bang-up job," into duty. Paired with it being the first game for the offense under a new veer-based system, it was a lot for the Wildcats to handle.

Nevertheless, Montague persevered. A 53-yard run by Eli Petersen - which included a terrific cutback to slice up the Hawks' defense - set up his short first-half touchdown run, which kept the Wildcats afloat. Down 20-7 at halftime, the Montague defense rose up and delivered a three-and-out, and a bad Hawks punt set the 'Cats up with good field position.

Montague took advantage, sticking to the ground game with a physical, up-the-middle attack that delivered a short scoring run by Thommen, cutting the deficit to 20-14. It was emblematic, Koops said, of the work the team has put in in the weight room.

"I thought we physically matched up much better than we did in years past," Koops said, noting the lopsided FHE win in this matchup in 2024. "Our kids have put a lot of work into the weight room, and you could see that physically. A lot of times, the movement, the surge of the offensive line or the defensive line went our way."

On the biggest drive of the game, though, the Hawks were able to make big plays. Forced to punt after a big-time run by Cooper Bradley on a reverse didn't produce any more first downs, Montague was victimized defensively by some remarkable individual plays by FHE signal-caller Kenric Penkevich.

Penkevich made two clutch throws on an eight-minute scoring drive, one on 4th-and-8 and another on 3rd-and-15, and FHE was able to overcome two touchdowns being called back for holding penalties to punch in the clinching score on a short quarterback run with just over two minutes left. That too came on third down.

While the results were perhaps frustrating, it was easy to see that Koops sees in his team something that's not as easy to coach as scheme or details - a winning attitude.

"We can fix execution," Koops said. "The effort and the mentality and the attitude was there, so I feel happy about that. We can work on the execution.

"The kids played really hard, and I'm proud of them for playing hard."

Dylan Bailey had nine tackles to lead Montague defensively, and Bradley had seven.