MANHATTAN \u2014 After two straight seasons of championship heartbreak, Manhattan finally found a way. <\/p>\n
The Tigers defeated Three Forks 28-7 on Saturday afternoon in the Class B championship to lock up their second state title \u2014 the first came in 2020 \u2014 while also wrapping up an undefeated 12-0 season. <\/p>\n
After falling in overtime to Florence 21-14 in the 2023 title game and then coming short against Malta in last season’s championship, the third time proved to be the charm. <\/p>\n
“It’s a surreal feeling, we’ve been looking forward to this the past two years,” said junior wide receiver Brayden Zikmund. “Three Forks is a great team and we knew the environment was going to be awesome. We just had to come out and play our game. Obviously it worked out in the end.” <\/p>\n
WATCH THE VIDEO: <\/p>\n
Manhattan football breaks through, earns first Class B championship since 2020<\/p>\n
The Tigers entered the postseason as the Southern B’s top seed and beat Joliet 49-22 in the opening round, avenged last season’s championship loss to Malta with a 12-7 victory over the Mustangs in the quarterfinals, and then fended off Eureka 14-12 in the semifinals to setup a championship against a Three Forks team making its first appearance in the title game.<\/p>\n
“Such a cool experience for both teams involved,” said Manhattan head coach Wes Kragt. “To have a game that’s so close within communities and seeing all the people here for Class B is an amazing experience.” <\/p>\n
The Tigers entered this season needing to shore up a roster that graduated 14 seniors last season \u2014 including starting quarterback Michael Stewart and running back George Stenberg \u2014 and only returned four starters. <\/p>\n
And so Manhattan carried a reload-not-rebuild mentality throughout this season and it paid off especially on defense with the Tigers surrendering just a combined 26 points in the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship. <\/p>\n
“We hang our hat on our defense,” said Kragt.”And for this team to come out hold a team like Three Forks and (Wolves quarterback) Kanon Reichman to seven points, it’s just their grit, their energy. They were firing on all cylinders.” <\/p>\n
It was Manhattan’s fifth championship appearance since 2019 and with a second title now in hand, they’ll look to start pursuing a third. <\/p>\n
“We want to keep going,” said Kragt. “We set the expectation of trying to get to this game and having a chance. “These kids will work hard in the spring and summer to get back and have another great year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANHATTAN \u2014 After two straight seasons of championship heartbreak, Manhattan finally found a way. The Tigers defeated Three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2640,75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-52388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-high-school-football","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}