The Lakes (1-0) throttled Carney-Nadeau 46-6 in their first eight-player game in school history on Saturday. It was also the first win for rookie head coach Brett Gervais, a 2011 LL-H graduate who later starred at Michigan Tech.

“I don’t look at it as my debut, I look at it as the school’s debut in eight-man, and so it was a great day for football,” Gervais said. “I’m glad that everybody was able to be down here safely and it’s just good to have football back. That’s the reality of it all. It’s good to get a win, but just to see the community excited again and just to see the guys warming up and throwing footballs around, that’s really what it’s all about.”

LL-H quickly found the two biggest factors for success in eight-player football — speed and space. The Lakes found plenty of both in the first quarter, using an eight-player version of their 11-player offensive playbook with fakes, misdirection and fundamental blocking.

The Lakes racked up 307 offensive yards, all rushing. Caleb Klein scored three touchdowns including a 75-yard kickoff return to open the second half. His other scores were runs for 23 yards and 16 yards. William Lyons scored a 55-yard run in the first. Brandon LaVigne scored on a 6-yard run.

Lake Linden-Hubbell head coach Brett Gervais, right, talks with Caleb Klein, left, during a game against Carney-Nadeau on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020, in Lake Linden, Mich. (Adam Niemi/The Daily Mining Gazette)

On defense, the Lakes looked just as aggressive and physical as it did under the watchful eye of previous head coach Andy Crouch, who took in the game while leaned against a fence overlooking Ron Warner Field.

Crouch, who coached the Lakes for 18 seasons and compiled a 118-58 (.670) record, has been helping Gervais in the background of the Lakes football program since retiring in January. Gervais said Crouch’s presence and help has been significant since he took over as head coach in April while the school transitioned to eight-player football during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gervais said the range of help from Crouch has been widespread.

“A lot of it has really been Coach Crouch. Even though he stepped down, he’s the guy that’s been pulling strings in the background to make sure that I’m on my feet out here coaching and making sure all the little details are done,” Gervais said. “The players have been great too. Over the summer, not only did we make that switch to eight-man, but COVID happened, so they’re at their houses doing workouts, they’re trying to get in whenever they can, doing all this protocol stuff. It’s been kind of an adventure for everybody.

“It can literally be anything from pregame, putting a memory chip in a camera, all the way to (me) asking him about a scheme,” Gervais added. “Asking him ‘hey, what formation should we do?’ when we first made the switch. What do we do offensively? What do you think? Then from there, you hope to make your own independent choices and start to be your own coach. But he’s been so big for this program and I think he’ll continue to be big for the program, whether he knows it or not.”

The Lakes of 2020, despite being an eight-player team, looked no different than the aggressive, physical Lakes of the past.

Carney-Nadeau (0-1) was held to 149 total yards, all through the air. The Wolves’ rushing was held to minus-11 yards on 18 carries, while passing for 160 yards. Throughout the game, the Lakes punished the Wolves’ every misstep and prevented Carney-Nadeau from gaining any sustained momentum.

“Like I told the guys here, Lake Linden is going to make noise in this eight-man division,” Carney-Nadeau head coach Jim Belec said. “We seen their 11-man tape and we were like ‘oh boy, we’re in for a heck of a show today.’ With us losing nine seniors, I knew we were going to have to plug and play new players everywhere and I knew it was going to be an extreme learning curve here.”

Apart from a touchdown with 34 seconds remaining in the first half, the Wolves had trouble all day getting deep into Lakes’ territory. The Wolves’ rushing struggles led to obvious passing situations, and the Lakes’ secondary jumped on throws in breaking up passes and getting three interceptions.

Ben Tampas paced the Lakes’ defense with two sacks, 1 1/2 tackles for loss, one solo tackle and two assists. Bode Brinkman, Mason Codere and Brenden Davis each had an interception.

Brinkman finished with a game-high 120 yards rushing on 14 carries for the Lakes. Klein finished with 77 yards on five carries.

The uncertainty of the pandemic had Gervais telling the team to play like it’s their last game.

“It’s been a roller-coaster ride for these seniors most importantly. You think about the juniors and sophomores too — they’re trying to develop as players for the years to come,” Gervais said. “It’s just a blessing to be out here in the first place and I was telling the guys before the game, don’t take anything for granted. Play like it’s your last game because it very well could be if things take a turn.”

LL-H got off to a fast start and led 32-0 after the first quarter.

The Lakes surrendered their only score in the second quarter and held a 40-6 halftime lead. The 34-point lead didn’t last long as LL-H returned the kickoff to start the second half.

After the Lakes’ dominant first half casted the mold for the game, the second half seemed more of a formality, with a running clock and backups on both teams taking snaps.

“We prepared all week pretty well. We didn’t really know what to expect too much out of Carney,” Gervais said. “We were going in thinking this is our only game of the year. We’re playing full on, full speed, everything you got. They did a really nice job with responding to being up big early on. It was actually nice to see Carney, they did a nice job all game, even the guys that came in late and a big injury to a guy, which hopefully he’s OK. I think it was a really high competitive level, even if the score did not show it. It was good to see high-level sports again just at any level.”

Wolves sophomore Brayden Kakuk suffered a lower body injury in the third quarter and was taken off the field on a stretcher but did not leave in the ambulance.

“I’m pretty sure he’ll be OK. It just seems like he got a hip pointer or something like that,” Belec said. “We watched the tape and it was more or less underneath the leg and not something violent where you see something gross.”

Gervais said he wasn’t doing anything extravagant to celebrate his first win.

“I’ll probably go home, take a nap, hang out with my dog because I’ve been neglecting him,” Gervais said. “Then I’ll probably have dinner with my wife. I feel bad because I didn’t realize it was literally going to be work and football every day, all day. I owe them a little bit of time now. Probably going to see my family, too.”

With a schedule change, Lake Linden-Hubbell visits Superior Central on Saturday.

“We’re looking into next week now. We’ll celebrate this for a little bit and then we have Superior Central next Saturday,” Gervais said. “I think we shook up the schedule a little bit because it worked for travel a little bit better. It made sense. Everybody is making the playoffs so we’ll just do what we can to get better on our end.”

Carney-Nadeau visits Forest Park on Friday.