Football: Colby Mortenson, Ottawa dominate all phases at Harvard

HARVARD – The players on the Ottawa High school football squad knew enough to savor something that they hadn’t felt in their tenure at the school.

However, the Pirates also know that what they’re relishing is in the past and it’s on to next Friday.

On the road against Harvard, junior quarterback Colby Mortenson accounted for five touchdowns in the first half – three rushing and two through the air – to lead the Pirates to a 49-point first half lead on their way to a 63-0 pasting of the Hornets on Friday night at Dan Horne Field.

Mortenson ran for TDs of 27, 5 and 3 yards and connected with Levi Sheehan and Branden Aguirre for scoring passes. Junior Garrett Cupples put the exclamation point on the first two periods with a 39-yard fumble return to the end zone as time ran out before the break.

That capped an amazing stretch where Ottawa scored 28 points in the last 4 minutes, 41 seconds of the second period.

Add a solid defensive effort that created three turnovers, forced two failed fourth-down tries and limited the Hornets to just 178 yards – nearly half of that the 82 yards on 16 carries by quarterback Landon Barnett – and it was a complete team win.

The victory sets Ottawa at 3-0 for the first time since it went 4-0 in 2015, when it lost its last five games and missed the postseason.

“As a team, 3-0 shouldn’t mean anything,” said Mortenson, who completed 7 of 9 passes for 189 yards and rushed four times for another 43. “It shouldn’t mean anything to us because we’re 0-0 going into next week against Sycamore. Obviously, our goal is the playoffs, but we can’t look at that. We have to just take it a week at a time and get better each time we play. That’s what we need to do.”

And that they did against the Hornets, using their speed to counter Harvard stacking the line to the tune of 470 total yards, 281 of those on a mere 13 tries in the ground game. Julian Alexander posted 128 yards on only three tries, and Keevon Peterson added 109 on only five carries down the stretch.

“We got what we expected; they packed the box to try and take away the power counter that we’d been killing teams with,” Ottawa coach Chad Gross said. “But the jet [sweep] was the answer tonight. They gave us the edges, and Colby had some nice runs tonight and also threw well, and Julian ran the jet really well, Ryder Miller did, too, when he had the chance, and Keevon ran it well at the end.”

The Hornets nearly scored on the game’s first series when Barnett sprinted for 38 yards, but fumbled, and Ottawa’s Conner Price recovered at the Pirates’ 25. It took the locals just two plays to cash in, Mortenson hitting Sheehan for a 55-yard gain, then running in the last 27 himself. Cam Loomis added the first of his eight PAT kicks for a 7-0 lead.

That got the ball rolling. A 60-yard Alexander run set up an eight-yard TD pass from Mortenson to Sheehan. Then, after a short Harvard punt, Mortenson connected with Aguirre for a 33-yard score for a 21-0 edge after one period.

The Pirates then went crazy to end the half, starting with Alexander’s 57-yard jaunt to pay dirt at 4:22, followed by Mortenson’s 5-yard touchdown at 1:31. Ryan Wilson’s fumble recovery and return to the Hornets 4 led to a 3-yard Mortenson score with 22 seconds left before Cupples capped the rally with his fumble return.

Peterson turned out the final two scores during the running-clock second half, a 9-yard burst in the third stanza and a whopping 73-yard ramble in the fourth.

“This is a great start, but we are by no means satisfied,” Gross said. “We’ve been saying all along that all we want to do is win this week. That’s all we can do, all we can worry about. We have to take one week at a time and we have a huge one next week. We’ll start tomorrow getting ready for Sycamore.

“Our side of the conference is a real challenge for us and we have to be ready to go, have a good week of practice, head to Sycamore and try to get another win there.”