Mick McCabe
Chess is not the game of choice for Negaunee football coach Paul Jacobson.
“I do not know how to play chess,” Jacobson said. “I’m a great checkers player, and I love to play cribbage.”
Yet there he was Friday night, standing across the field from the Upper Peninsula’s football chess grand champion, Jeff Olson, who has guided Ishpeming to three of the last four Division 7 state championships.
“Jeff had a couple of injuries here and there, and he changed the numbers on some kids so we tried to figure it out,” Jacobson said. “It was like a chess match at times between Jeff and I — seeing where he was putting his chess pieces, and we had to match. It was fun game to coach.”
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Making it even more fun was Negaunee’s 28-16 victory, the seventh straight win for the No. 1 team in Division 6.
As usual, it was a highly contested game between two of the U.P.’s most successful teams.
Neal Violetta ran for 93 yards and three touchdowns for the Miners to offset the 116 yards rushing by Ishpeming’s Isaac Olson. Violetta is over the 1,000-yard mark this season, and he has had games in which he gained far more yards than he did against the Hematites.
But this was a game in which every yard had to be earned.
“It was a battle up front,” said Jacobson. “You had two teams with real good defensive and offensive lines just going head to head. There was not a lot of throwing. It was an old-fashioned, smash-mouth football downhill and have fun.”
Like a lot of schools on both peninsulas, declining enrollment is a problem for Negaunee. Currently with 400 students, Negaunee is more than 100 students smaller than it was 10 years ago.
That can take a toll on a football program, but Jacobson has found a way to keep football interest high in his hometown, and it begins with the youth program.
“We have a flag-football program for third through sixth grade, and we had 110 kids out there Saturday morning,” he said. “There’s no parents involved. It’s just our kids coaching them. They’re able to see these kids play on the football field Friday night, and Saturday morning all of a sudden they’re being coached by these kids.”
Negaunee also has a middle school program, with over 50 kids from the seventh and eighth grades. Jacobson believes the key is the flag program.
“It’s a little like ‘The Sandlot,’ ” he said, referring to the 1993 movie about neighborhood kids playing baseball. “I grew up as a kid playing football in the backyard. There were no parents. No refs. You made your own plays up, drew them up in the sand. That’s kind of what this is.”
Jacobson coached his alma mater to the 2002 D-6 state championship at the Silverdome, and he would like to coach in Ford Field the day after Thanksgiving.
“When everybody starts off in August, that’s where you want to end up,” he said. “You set your goals as a team. Even in the spring, its conference, playoffs and always the state championship. That’s why we play the game. That’s why we coach the game — to have the opportunity to play at Ford Field.”
Ambry Thomas’ two TD returns lead Detroit King over East English
PSL playoffs
There has been a change to the Detroit Public School League playoff format, and as a result we may not get Cass-King Part II.
Instead of four teams playing for two division championships, six of the eight playoff teams are Division I teams.
“It changed everything when the coaches wanted to go with the top eight teams with the best records,” said Alvin Ward, director of athletics for the PSL. “Either way you go, somebody’s going to get knocked out, and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m setting it up the way the coaches’ association wanted.”
Cass Tech is the No. 1 seed, team followed by Mumford, King, Denby, Cody, East English Village, Western and Pershing. Denby and Pershing are the only Division II teams.
That means Friday at Northwestern, Mumford, which beat Western, 36-6, last week, will play Western at 5 p.m. followed by the Cass-Pershing game at 7:30. Saturday at Northwestern, Denby will play Cody at noon, followed by the King-East English rematch at 2:30.
The PSL will have two championship games on Week 9 at Ford Field, but Ward can’t say for sure how this week’s four winners will match up in those two championship games.
It is anybody’s guess which team Cass will face in a championship game, should Cass beat Pershing and if King handles East English.
Could it be Cass-King again?
“There’s that possibility, but it’s not a certainty,” Ward said. “I’ve got to take everything into consideration: points for, points against, head to head, all of that stuff. It’s a lot, and I can’t predict it now.”
Contact Mick McCabe: 313-223-4744 or mmccabe@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1.