Class 3A football semifinals: Collegiate at Halstead

The chance to play for a 3A football title comes down to Friday’s semifinals.

Here’s a closer look at Collegiate and Halstead:

Class 3A

Collegiate (12-0) at Halstead (12-0), 7 p.m.

Collegiate

Top players: QB Austin Waddell, sr.; RB Nathan Burgoyne, sr.; WR Jack Larsen, sr.; TE-LB Cooper Root, jr.; RB-LB Levi Aldag, sr.; OL-DL Will Locke, sr.

Key stats: Waddell is 84 of 134 passing for 1,649 yards. Burgoyne has 1,434 rushing yards and 497 receiving. Larsen has a team-high 550 receiving yards. The Spartans have scored 690 points, including more than 60 six times.

Spartans coach Mike Gehrer

Reaction to being in the semifinals: “It’s one of those things where the kids have worked so hard. Any loss from here on out hurts extremely bad. You really want to feel good about it because the kids have put in a tremendous amount of work. But you’ve got to win, too, to really feel good about it.”

What has gotten you here: “They are very relentless. They go about work, go about the business of executing the plan. They buy into it and execute it. There are multiple weapons. Nathan was doing great things, but we knew what we had in Austin at quarterback and Jack Larsen as a great possession receiver. Cooper Root has gone unnoticed on defense, but he’s a tremendous blocking tight end, too.”

What will it take to win: “Playing a triple-option team, you have to be assignment sound. You have to do your job and not try to do someone else’s job. They do the same thing over and over and eventually someone fails and doesn’t do their assignment. Halstead believes in what they do, and we have to be committed to it in the same way on defense. For us it’s going to come down to defense. It will be the difference.”

What fans should know about your team: “It’s our overall team speed. It’s better than people really give us credit for. That (includes) how well the linemen and everyone runs.”

Halstead

Top players: QB-DB Eli McKee, sr.; RB-LB Blake Beckett, sr.; TE-DE Tate Kaufman, sr.; OL-DL Zack Wright, sr.; FB-LB Layke Heimerman, jr.; RB-S Chase Vansteenburg, jr.

Key stats: McKee has 1,372 rushing yards. Beckett, who suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament on Oct. 16, has 1,202 rushing yards and is still playing. Heimerman has a team-high 93 tackles, Beckett has 69. Heimerman, Beckett and Wright have a combined 46 tackles for loss.

Dragons coach Jason Grider

Reaction to being in the semifinals: “It’s a different kind of excitement this year than last year. Last year we were exited to be there and excited to be playing this late. we are this year, too, but we’ve been here before and tasted it, and now we want to take care of business and take the next step.”

What has gotten you here: “We’ve got such a veteran ballclub that has played in a lot of games. We were in this spot a year ago. We’ve handled our business throughout the season. We’ve had a lot of bumps and bruises, a lot of kids playing through a lot of stuff, and that starts with (Beckett). The other thing with our team is our numbers don’t jump off the page, but we’re a pretty deep team.”

What will it take to win: “It’s going to take a monumental effort. We’ll have to be fundamentally sound on defense, recognize what they want to do on offense, get a lot of guys to the ball. We have to control the clock and keep the ball out of their offense’s hands and sustain long scoring drives.”

What fans should know about your team: “We’re a very physical football team. We pride ourselves on being physical. We feel that our guys are a smart group of kids. They make good adjustments.… We have a lot of team speed, so when we make a mistake. we can correct those.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 5:02 PM with the headline "Class 3A football semifinals: Collegiate at Halstead."