MARQUETTE – The Marquette Senior High School football team got off to a rough start, then things got even worse during the first half of their Homecoming football game against Kingsford at William R. Hart Stadium on Friday night.

After giving up a touchdown on game’s first possession, Marquette was then plagued by bad snaps, fumbles and even a punt that went for negative yards in a 49-7 blowout loss to Kingsford.

“We had a terrible start,” Redmen head coach Dave L’Huillier said. “You cannot give a team like that that many points and that many opportunities. Anything that could’ve gone wrong for us in that first quarter, went wrong for us.

“When you’re playing a team that good, you can’t make any mistakes and we made way too many against them.”

On the other hand, the Flivvers were happy to take advantage of Marquette’s miscues and used great field position to build up an insurmountable lead.

“We got some great field position early, and you’ve got to like that because it gave us some short drives,” Kingsford head coach Chris Hofer said. “We got a lot of breaks early, and I’m happy for our kids because we capitalized on them.”

The Flivvers scored first on a 10-yard touchdown pass from Brandon Kowalkowski to Trevor Roberts. The Flivvers caught their first break on Marquette’s opening possession when a bad snap rolled 13 yards into the end zone and was recovered by Kingsford’s Ben Moreau for a touchdown.

Marquette committed another error when a punt was fumbled and recovered deep in Redmen territory. Three plays later, Kingsford’s Andrew Barker scored from 1 yard out and the Flivvers led 21-0 after one quarter.

Things continued to go Kingsford’s way in the second quarter. The Flivvers went up by four scores on a short run by Moreau, and later they took advantage of a negative-5-yard punt to set up another TD on a 27-yard run by Sam Santi.

Later in the second quarter, Moreau picked up his third TD when he returned a Marquette fumble 20 yards for the score.

Marquette kept the game from being a shutout when Tripp connected with Patrick Burmeister for a 53-yard TD as the Redmen trailed 42-7 at the break.

Kingsford completed its scoring late in the third quarter on a 24-yard run by Barker.

Marquette is off next week before hosting Menominee on Oct. 16.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 246. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.