WHITTEMORE-PRESCOTT - Sep. 3, 2009 - Hale's football team put up a better battle with Whittemore-Prescott than it did a year ago. W-P scored early and often Thursday to lead 25-0 at the half and went on to win 31-6.

Still, it was a far cry from the Cards' 50-0 win last season.

"If you take the first quarter out, I was pretty happy with how we played," said Hale coach Bill Lake. "We hadn't played against and certainly hadn't practiced against anyone with the kind of speed that (W-P's) Cody Foreman has. We knew he was fast, but we definitely had our problems dealing with him especially at first."

Foreman scored three of W-P's four first half touchdowns on pass receptions of 40 and 28 yard and on and 11-yard run. Greg Lomason's 2-yard run accounted for the other first half score.

"Cody is a game-changer," said W-P coach Kevin Frederick. "You really can't simulate that."

"We tried to take him right off the line of scrimmage," Lake said. "But he was too fast and too well-coached for that to bother him.

"Once we dropped off him a bit and had Christian Mudry on him in coverage we contained him better, but it was still tough."

Foreman finished with five receptions and 133 yards -- all but 12 of Dylan DeBoever's passing yards -- as well as 96 yards rushing on seven carries.

Lake was pleased that his team played even with the Cards in the second half. Eddy Cadwell's 1-yard run capped a 13-play drive and made it 25-6 in the third quarter. Foreman scored on a 19-yard run in the fourth to make it a 25-point lead again. Hale was poised to score in the final seconds with a first down at the 2-yard line. But W-P sacked Hale quarterback Tanner Shellenbarger twice, and Kevin Dupuis picked off a pass and went 70 yards the other way before Shellenbarger was able to run him down short of the goal line.

"Those first two scores were embarrassingly easy," Lake said. "But we made them work for the rest of what they got. They had convert a couple of fourth-and-forevers that sure what have helped us a lot if we could've stopped them."

"They hit us hard," Frederick said. "And we again had some second-half miscues. We need to eliminate those to get where we want to be."

W-P (2-0) travels to Oscoda (2-0) on Friday, Sep. 11, while Hale (0-2) takes on Arenac Eastern (1-1) in the annual Jug game.