The Griswold Tigers fought hard on Friday night but couldn’t keep pace with the East Mills Wolverines and suffered a 51-22 loss on the gridiron. The Wolverines raced out to an early 16-0 lead behind two big plays. East Mills quarterback Michael Schafer hit Nic Duysen for the first score on a 27 yard touchdown pass on a 4th and 11 play to open the scoring. Schafer then hit Riley Story for a 50-yard touchdown on a screen play to put East Mills up 16-0.

The Tigers would answer back with a 7 play drive that was capped off by a Jayden Amend 13 yard touchdown run. The Tigers would take advantage of the Wolverines being pinned deep in the second quarter to punch another score in on a Derek Mueller 1 yard touchdown run that tied the game up at 16. The ensuing kickoff would go out of bounds for an illegal procedure call and the Wolverines chose to make the Tigers kick again. That decision payed off in the form of a Riley Story 60 yard kick return touchdown to immediately put the Wolverines back out front. The Wolverines would add another score before half to take a 30-16 lead into halftime.

The Wolverines then amped up the offense in the 3rd quarter and out-gained the tigers 170-9. East Mills owned the third quarter and raced away to a 44-22 lead before later taking in one more score to give the final score of 51-22.

Griswold Head Coach Andy Everett was proud of the way his team fought hard throughout the game and saw signs of improvement from the entire team. He felt the Tigers showed a lot of grit by continuing to  play hard when breaks weren’t going their way.

East Mills improves to 3-0 on the season and will travel to Bedford next week. The Tigers fall to 0-3 and will next host Sidney on Friday night.