By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
SCHOOLCRAFT — A tenacious defensive effort and a powerful Wing-T run game that chews up the clock and shortens games are staples of Constantine football.
Both of those ingredients were on display in full effect last Friday night, with the Falcons spoiling Schoolcraft’s homecoming celebration at Roy Davis Field, soundly defeating the Eagles 41-21 to give them their first loss of the season.
“It’s been a little while since we’ve been able to kind of grind those types of games out. So, I’m glad to see our line is starting to gel a little bit,” Constantine head coach Shawn Griffith said. “We were coming off the ball real well, and then with multiple backs being able to do what we were able to do, it’s great to see.”
Brody Godfrey was running all over the field for Constantine on the evening, scoring four touchdowns on the evening on 18 carries for 214 yards. His first score came on a 29-yard touchdown rush when the line opened up a hole up the middle and Godfrey burst through the Eagles defense, putting the Falcons up 7-0.
Schoolcraft would get right back into the game with a 1-yard rushing score by Beckett Boyes, set up by a long 39-yard pass from Jack DeVries to Brennan Weaver, to make it 7-7, which would remain the score after the first quarter.
Constantine’s next drive after the touchdown took nearly nine minutes off the clock and bled into the second quarter. Starting at their own 11 yard line, the Falcons marched 89 yards on 14 plays, capped off by Godfrey’s second touchdown of the night, a 9-yard scamper to the left side to make it 14-7 Constantine.
Schoolcraft’s offense would stall out in four plays on its next drive, including a sack by Cooper McDonald, leading to a punt with just under four and a half minutes to go in the half. Constantine would do another march down the field, aided in part by a rare pass from Braden Bienz to Cooper McGee for 26 yards. It appeared Godfrey would have his third score of the day on a 19-yard rush with just a few seconds left in the half, but a holding call brought it back. A desperation heave at the end of the half fell short, putting the Falcons up 14-7 going into the break.
Constantine would chew up more and more clock to start the second half after receiving the kickoff. Their first drive of the third quarter took up just over six minutes of game time, going 83 yards in 11 plays, capped off by a hurdling 1-yard touchdown by Godfrey, this time getting his third score of the game to put the Falcons up 21-7. The drive included another long pass, a 35-yard completion to Chase Manes.
Schoolcraft’s offense remained out of sorts on its first drive of the half, going three and out on two incompletions and a five-yard rush, leading to yet another punt. The next drive for Constantine would be shorter – just two plays – but end in the same result it had been seemingly all evening. Godfrey busted through the right side and found nothing but the night sky in front of him, galloping 61 yards for his fourth touchdown of the game, putting Constantine up 28-7.
The Eagles offense would get swallowed up again on the ensuing drive, leading to another three-and-out, and the Falcons would capitalize on their ensuing drive. With 7:25 to go in the fourth quarter, the Eagles capped off a 6 minute, 46 second drive that spanned the third and fourth quarters with a 13-yard touchdown run up the middle by former White Pigeon back Maddix Jancasz to make it 35-7.
Schoolcraft would get on the board for the first time since the first quarter on the ensuing kickoff, with Saxton Abfall going 86 yards to the house to make the score 35-14. Constantine would get its sixth touchdown of the night on its next possession, as McGee plunged in for a 1-yard score to make it 41-14 after a failed extra point.
The Eagles would get just their second truly sustained drive of the game, going 11 plays and 90 yards in 3 minutes, 33 seconds, capped off by a 22-yard touchdown pass from Jack DeVries to Landon DeVries in the back of the end zone to make it 41-21. Constantine would kneel the ball out to end the game.
Constantine’s offense was punishing on the ground, notching 471 of the team’s overall 532 yards of offense carrying the rock. That was more than double the normally-high-flying Schoolcraft’s entire offensive output of 203 yards, only getting nine first downs on the night, four of them on their final possession of the game.
“Defensively until late there, I thought we were very strong as well,” Griffith said. “They’ve got a lot of players that can go the distance. We were really trying to avoid the big play and be able to make them grind things out. They don’t really like doing that. I thought we did a nice job of that. Guys tackled well tonight. We were able to get a lot of pressure on their quarterback, and I think that kind of threw him off a little.”
Godfrey, the main man in the ground game for Constantine, credited his lineman for his performance on the night.
“Early in the game, they were crashing down hard. We were having trouble getting it up the hole, but eventually we started just working them. We started hitting our blocks and kept driving. Thanks to my lineman, I was just able to find a gap and break free,” Godfrey said. “When [the run game’s] really firing on all cylinders, you’re not even going to know where the ball is. If we’ve got the right blocks, you can’t stop it. We just drove down the field. They just couldn’t stop it. We ran the clock out and scored every time.”
Along with Godfrey, Brody Bienz had 15 carries for 121 yards, Jancasz had 14 carries for 100 yards and a touchdown, and McGee had 11 totes for 34 yards and a score. Defensively, Brody Bienz had nine tackles and two sacks to lead the way.
For Schoolcraft, Jack DeVries was 10-of-18 passing for 137 yards and a touchdown, with Landon DeVries catching two balls for 55 yards and a touchdown to lead the way. Eagles head coach Dan DeVries said after the game he knew it was going to be a tough game against Constantine.
“Great first half of football, and I think they came out and out-physicaled us in the second half, and it showed on the scoreboard,” Dan DeVries said. “We weren’t able to stop the ball when they were running on off-tackle on us. Any time you play a T-team, you’re only going to get so many possessions, so you don’t have time to come in and figure something out, you have to get it done. We had our opportunities, we had some dropped balls, and we have some work on Monday, put the work in and get ready to go.”
With the result, both teams go to 3-1 on the season, with Constantine playing tonight at South Haven at 7 p.m. and Schoolcraft going on the road to face Coloma at 7 p.m. Griffith said the win is a big one for his program after a down season in 2025.
“It feels great every time you beat Schoolcraft. They’re a great coached team, great players, and we came out tonight,” Griffith said. “Just a great program win anytime you can beat Schoolcraft.”
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
