By Josh Staloch
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – The Notre Dame Academy football team was dealt its first defeat of the season Saturday, May 1, as the Superior Spartans came to town and racked up 314 yards of total offense en route to a 19-10 nonconference victory.
“We win as a team, and we lose as a team,” said Notre Dame head coach Mike Rader. “This year, we’ve been fortunate enough to win more than we’ve lost. This is the nature of the game. You have to embrace it, understand what you did wrong and move on.”
The first few plays of the game were characteristically solid for Notre Dame as it got its running game going with Will Zellner moving the ball well against a stout Superior defense.
But uncharacteristically, the Tritons couldn’t convert a third-and-short in Spartans’ territory and then got stuffed on a fourth-and-1 attempt to give the ball back to Superior near midfield.
After the Spartans moved the ball to the Notre Dame 15, they had to settle for a 32-yard field goal for the game’s first points.
On its next drive, Superior relied on the legs of Kaden Kimmes.
The 6-foot-2 quarterback took most of the drive’s snaps himself, eventually punching it in from 6 yards out on fourth-and-1 to make it 10-0 after the extra point.
The Tritons went into the halftime break with a bit of momentum, though.
A methodic drive got them close enough for Aiden Wolfram to put a 27-yard kick through the uprights with seconds remaining.
Some big defense to start the third quarter from Notre Dame forced the Spartans into making a bad play on fourth-and-short to turn the ball over on downs.
From there, Zellner, who finished with 137 yards on 29 carries, went to work on the ground and ended up scoring from 18 yards out, tying the contest at 10-10 after Wolfram’s extra point.
Superior again pushed the ball deep into Tritons’ territory on its next drive, getting to the 2-yard line before being stuffed on two straight run plays to give the ball back to Notre Dame.
Disaster struck when the Tritons tried to get the ball away from their goal line, but the Superior defense made a play in the backfield and picked up a pair of points on a safety for a 12-10 lead.
Notre Dame, unable to convert on a 45-yard field-goal attempt on its next drive, saw the game slip away following a Superior pass play only made possible from blown coverage.
That reception set up a 6-yard scoring run to put the game out of reach.
“Superior had a couple of big plays on offense our defense is usually pretty good at stopping,” said Rader. “We had a couple of third downs we couldn’t convert when we needed to. There were a lot of little things today. They executed, and we didn’t.”
The Tritons managed only 164 yards of total offense.
Wolfram led the defense with 11 tackles (four solo, seven assists) and also had an interception.