Photos by Luke Bender
By Dom Reed

LEWISTOWN – Friday night, the  Mifflin County football team welcomed in the Northern Polar Bears to open conference play in the Mid Penn .

Both teams came up empty in their first possessions. Northern gained momentum in their second drive as the Polar Bears entered down into Huskies territory. Grady Bonin would find an open receiver but Reese Christine would creep up quickly to pick off Bonin’s pass. Mifflin County would set up shop at their own 48 yard line.Mifflin County would then come up with no points as both teams would be locked up at zero after one quarter of action.

The Huskies would wreak havoc again as Bonin’s pass would be picked off.  This time Lucas Hartung would come up with the interception in the endzone.

Mifflin County would score on  a 13-yard passing play from Hartung to Lucas Hartung.

The Huskies would lead at 7-0.

Mifflin County would get the ball back and would strike again this time it would be a dart thrown to Easton Zook for a 33-yard score to extend the lead 14-0 following Joel Beamer’s extra point.

It feels great. I mean our defense has been unbelievable,” said Mifflin County quarterback Chase Hartung. “We still need a little work on offense. We’ll get there. It feels great though good momentum going into next week.”

The Polar Bears, despite not scoring any points, got production from their running backs and recievers Gabe Johnson, Jaxon Tyree and Bonin Bonin himself ran through the heart of the Huskies defense.

Northern also got production from Landen Geidel,Tristain Wenrich and Gavin Bucek in the losing effort.

Mifflin County was really tough on defense in the shut win over the Polar Bears.

Jaren Kenny and Corbin Yoder both had sacks in the game making it hard on the Polar Bears offense to get much of anything going.

“This game was a dog fight these are all going to be god fights.We know that their a pretty good football team. They do a lot of different things on offense,” said Mifflin County coach Shane Breon. “I’m really proud of our defense and how they played and we hung in there. We had some injuries. We had some kids out. I’m  just very proud with our kids on how they hung in there.  Our defense played fantastic. Our offense did enough to score there a couple times and move the ball a little bit and keep the clock running. Like I told them any win in the Mid Penn we will take it. We have a tough one next week and we will recover here and get ready for next week against a really tough team.”

Mifflin County’s two touchdowns would be enough to get the Dawgs past the Polar Bears in a game where Mifflin County won the turnover battle with some key takeaways to help prevail them to their first conference win of the season to improve to 2-0 for the first time since 2023. 

Mifflin County will travel to Mechanicsburg next week. In two weeks from now they will be back at Donald M Chapman Stadium lll to host a game with Hershey.