Appleton North, Xavier, Fox Valley Lutheran pick up dominating high school football victories

APPLETON − Appleton North was at it again, using its fantastic defense to smother Oshkosh North in a 42-0 Fox Valley Association football victory Friday at Paul Engen Field.

The Lightning's victory highlighted three wins for city schools with Xavier beating Seymour 41-8 and Fox Valley Lutheran rolling past Denmark 35-7.

Here are some takeaways from Appleton city schools competing Friday.

Lightning holds Spartans to 83 yards

Appleton North scored 28 points over the middle quarters to whip Oshkosh North at Paul Engen Field.

Jack Robinson scored on runs of 4 and 3 yards, Luke Kritzer had a rushing score and also had a touchdown pass of 21 yards to Abraham Tomori and the Lightning also got scoring runs from Bobby Salm (6 yards) and Tyson Salm (2 yards).

But it was the Appleton North defense that shined again. The Lightning had Oshkosh North under wraps, allowing just five first downs, 21 rushes for 21 yards and 83 yards total.

The Lightning defense has held its opponents under 10 points in four of its five victories and is allowing just 8.2 points per game.

"Our focus has been to get better every week and focus on what we can control," North head coach Rob Salm said. "I feel the boys carried over an excellent week of practice and executed in all three phases of the game. Oshkosh North has a good coaching staff and had their players ready to play. We're proud of our performance tonight and earning an FVA victory."

North is tied atop the Fox Valley Association with Kimberly at 3-0. The Lightning play at Neenah next week and have a home game against Kaukauna on Sept. 29 before finishing the season at Appleton East (Oct. 6) and at home against Kimberly (Oct. 13).

Patriots fall short against Kimberly

Appleton East was hoping to show it belongs in the upper echelon of teams in the Fox Valley Association, but the Papermakers got four touchdown passes from Carson Pendleton in a 42-14 win over the Patriots at Papermaker Stadium.

Kimberly led 21-6 at halftime, then Pendleton threw three touchdown passes in the second half.

“We kind of made some adjustments at half and then had some difficulties lining up correctly and obviously when you don’t line up correctly then you’re not in the right spots and that results in some wide-open receivers,” Patriots coach Mark Krommenacker said. “That was kind of a self-inflicted wound of just not being in the right spots and obviously they took really good advantage of that. That’s a credit to them.”

The Patriots pulled within 7-6 early in the second quarter on an 87-yard touchdown pass from Alex Thompson to Cameron Scott. They got their other touchdown in the fourth quarter on a 9-yard pass from Thompson to Daniel Dieck.

East fell to 2-3 overall and 1-2 in the FVA with a home game next week against Fond du Lac.

“Our kids still believe that we can compete with anybody,” Krommenacker said. “It just comes down to us executing. A lot of it again, in all of our losses, was just us really not doing our jobs, not executing and that’s what it came down to. It’s frustrating but I think our kids do still believe. We believe that we can compete with anybody, but not when you just don’t do your job really and execute … As a coach I need to put them in better positions to be successful, so I definitely need to take a look at this and how we can learn from it and get better moving forward.”

Xavier captures Bay Conference lead

The Hawks are alone atop the Bay Conference after whipping Seymour 41-8 on the strength of a pair of touchdown runs from Matthew Potter and a touchdown run and pass reception from Evan McCormick.

Xavier (4-1, 3-0 Bay) also got a 4-yard scoring run from Reid Hietpas and a 21-yard touchdown run from Isaiah Des Jardins. The Hawks led Seymour 35-0 at the half.

The Hawks play at Waupaca next Friday and are at home against Shawano on Sept. 28.

High school football scores: Wisconsin high school football schedule and scores for Week 5 of the 2023 season

Foxes win third consecutive game

Fox Valley Lutheran had a complete win it its 35-7 victory over visiting Denmark, scoring all of its points in the first half.

Jack Egan scored two touchdowns and the Foxes scored twice on defense to improve to 4-1 overall and 3-0 in the North Eastern Conference. FVL is tied with Luxemburg-Casco for the NEC lead and plays at Little Chute (4-1) and Wrightstown (4-1) the next two weeks before finishing the regular season at home against the Spartans (Oct. 6) and Freedom (Oct. 13).

Elijah Last had a 43-yard interception return for a touchdown and David Schumacher returned a fumble 80 yards for another TD for FVL, which also got touchdown runs of 9 and 17 yards from Egan. FVL quarterback Liam Heiges capped the scoring with a 70-yard touchdown pass to Lucas Papendorf.

Egan finished with 105 yards rushing on 14 carries. Heiges had 100 yards passing on 5-of-7 attempts.

Terrors drop game to Wausau East

Wausau East got its second victory of the season and first in the Valley Football Association with a 44-0 win over visiting Appleton West (0-5) at Thom Field.

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This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Appleton North, Xavier, FVL winners in high school football