Alburnett overcomes fast, powerful start by Golden Hawks

WELLMAN

Midway through the first half of its home opener last Friday against highly touted Alburnett, Mid-Prairie had toasted the Pirates.

An 8-yard touchdown pass thrown by senior quarterback Brooks Weber, tying a school record, and caught by Nolan Jergens, was followed by a successful onside kick and then a 7-yard scoring pass to Carson Humphrey to put the Golden Hawks up by 13 points.

Not even six minutes in, the Golden Hawks, ranked No. 4 in the Des Moines Register Class 2A poll, were showing the door to second-ranked Alburnett, and the Pirates hadn’t yet touched the ball.

“We know Mid-Prairie’s a really good football team,” Alburnett head coach Nicholas Wooldrik said. “We knew that coming in.”

Eventually, Alburnett’s senior running back Laken Caves, the second-fastest sprinter in Iowa 2A the last two years, turned the night into a 35-28 Alburnett win with three touchdowns and a 215-yard rushing performance that pushed his 2A-leading total to over 500 yards.

But, oh, that beginning.

Jergens caught a pass from Weber and dove over the goal line for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead just 4:05 into the game.

Then, Golden Hawks kicker Kale Miller perfected an onside kick that was recovered by Mid-Prairie and led to a school record-breaking 7-yard TD pass from Weber to Humphrey. The scoring pass was the 34th of Weber’s two-year varsity career and he added another to Kale Miller in the final minutes of the game.

Golden Hawk fans shouted gleefully from the home side of the stadium while the visiting side went silent.

Alburnett was, after all, the only team to knock off Mid-Prairie in the regular season last year.

But on the Mid-Prairie sideline, Golden Hawks head coach Daren Lambert knew the night wasn’t over.

“At no point did I feel that we were complacent,” he said. “We knew it was coming. They’re a great football team.”

In addition to matching up two of the top four teams in Iowa 2A, the game matched up Caves, a runner-up finisher in the last two state track 100-yard championship dashes at Drake’s Blue Oval, and Mid-Prairie junior running back Ryan Henry, a two-time state finalist in the 100.

Henry scored on a 1-yard run in the second quarter.

Mid-Prairie’s defense, led by leading tacklers Cecil Kelley and Caedyn Huston, bottled up Caves early in the game, but when the Pirates moved Caves to a slot position, away from the backfield, it changed the game.

An 18-yard run by Caves in the second quarter trimmed a 21-7 Mid-Prairie lead to 21-14, and then Caves (and a PAT kick by Reis Moore) tied the score at 21-21 on a 24-yard pass from quarterback Brody Kaestner with 15 seconds left in the first half.

Caves added a 56-yard scoring run in the third quarter, a play in which he dropped back, took a backward lateral pass from Kaestner and bolted down the right sidelines for a TD and a 28-21 lead. The Pirates never trailed again.

Caves ran for 215 yards on 25 carries.

“He’s a special athlete,” Wooldrik said. “We just try to get the ball to him in space. The thing about him is, he can be a power runner, he’s physical, you get him on the outside and no one’s going to catch him.”

It’s pretty much what the Golden Hawks had last year in 2026 graduate Hudson Ehrenfelt, who scored a school-record 67 touchdowns in four years and last season played three offensive positions, including quarterback.

“We’ve had a guy like that in our offense,” Lambert said. “When you have those players, you try and put him in different situations to make the other side adjust, and I thought we did well. He’s going to make plays. It was just one of those nights where they made just a couple more than us. We’ve got to learn from it and get better.”

The Pirates were cruising with a two-touchdown lead when a scoring pass from Weber to Kale Miller with 2:49 left pulled the Golden Hawks to within a touchdown.

This time, an onside kick failed, allowing Alburnett to run out the clock.

“We knew it was going to be something like this,” Lambert said.

After defeating county rival Washington and losing to Alburnett, a 2025 2A state quarterfinalist, the Golden Hawks will finish out their non-district schedule Friday at Sigourney Keota, a traditional 1A power that loaded up its early schedule with three 2A opponents.

“It’s going to be hard next week,” Lambert said. “We talked about how this makes us better. It’s an opportunity to learn, grow. We’ve got to use our opportunities to either push us forward or take a step back. The feeling from the postgame is these guys are ready. We’ve got great kids and they’re fighters.”

BY THE NUMBERS

ALBURNETT 35, MID-PRAIRIE 28

Alburnett      7   14   7   7    --  35

Mid-Prairie  13    8   0   7  --   28

M-P: Nolan Jergens 8 pass from Brooks Weber (Kale Miller kick)

M-P: Carson Humphrey 7 pass from Weber (kick failed)

A: Cooper Franklin 1 pass from Brody Kaestner (Reis Moore kick)

M-P: Ryan Henry 1 run (Humphrey pass from Weber)

A: Laken Caves 18 run (Moore kick)

A: Caves 24 pass from Kaestner (Moore kick)

A: Caves 56 run (Moore kick)

A: Franklin 4 run (Moore kick)

M-P: Miller 8 pass from Weber (Miller kick)

PASSING LEADERS

Mid-Prairie, Brooks Weber, 18-30-191, 3 TD, 1 INT; Alburnett, Brody Kaestner, 7-12-131, 2 TDs, 1 INT.

RUSHING LEADERS

Mid-Prairie, Ryan Henry, 14-44, 1 TD; Weber, 7-6; Lenox Miller, 2-6; Tommy Miller, 1-1; Alburnett, Laken Caves, 25-215, 2 TDs; Cooper Franklin, 4-25, 1 TD; Owen Henriksen, 4-18; Kaestner, 4-6.

RECEIVING LEADERS

Mid-Prairie, Kale Miller, 6-26, 1 TD; Kendrick Kos, 5-71; Nolan Jergens, 3-35, 1 TD; Carson Humphrey, 2-35, 1 TD; Lenox Miller, 2-24; Alburnett, Cash Varner, 2-60; Henricksen, 1-26; Caves, 1-24, 1 TD; Beckett Misener, 1-10; Franklin, 1-1, 1 TD.

TACKLING LEADERS

Mid-Prairie, Cecil Kelley, 7; Caedyn Huston, 6; Kendrick Kos, 5, 1 INT; Alburnett, Cooper Franklin, 8.5; Owen Henriksen, 5.5; Eaghan Fleshman, 5.