The #1 Montrose Indians lost (28-29) the semi-final game as they travelled to Erie, Colorado November 27th to play against the #5 Erie Tigers  in a thriller that was decided in the last minutes of the game.

The Indians were led by Blake Griffin scoring 3 touchdowns and Ethan Hartman scoring a touchdown as well.

Montrose started off strong, but Erie kept pace with the Indians in the first half keeping the score 14-14. Montrose got the ball to start the second half, and they didn’t score until their second possession. The Indian defense held off the Tigers to give them the lead going into the 4th quarter.

The beginning of the 4th quarter, Montrose started to rally and they went up by 14 points and scored first in the 4th. The Indians first touchdown of the 4th scored by Griffin, happened to be their last touchdown of the season. The Tigers scored a touchdown well into the 4th quarter, making the score (21-28). The Tigers started to gain momentum, and then pulled off one of the most creative onside kick recoveries Montrose has seen this season, with only 4 minutes left in the game. The Tiggers were able to capitalize on this onside kick recovery which lead to a touchdown and a 2-pt conversion. The Tiger pulled ahead (29-28) with a little more then a minute left on the clock.

Montrose quarterback, Gage Wareham, tried to lead the Indians to a game winning drive with a long 20+ yard throw to Hartman that put the Indians in field goal range. Montrose  ran one more play to  Griffin, but he lost the ball and Erie recovered it. With less than a minute to go, they took a knee and rand the clock down. 

The Indians ended their season 12-1 with Ethan Hartman leading the offense with 1761 total yards and Bode Greiner leading the defense with 153 total tackles.

“Of course it’s not the way we wanted the season to end, but all we could do now is look forward and get ready for the off-season,” Junior Jason Tosi said.

“We are overall pretty happy with the season and what we accomplished, winning league, going 10-0 in the offseason, it was something montrose hasn’t done in a while, there is a lot of positive thinks we should be happy about and to not be focusing on the one loss. Head Coach Brett Mertens said.