Adam Bird | Grand Rapids Press

As Muskegon’s Kevonta Keyes (above) will attest, field conditions have been the unbiased twenty-third man in the 2009 high school football playoffs.  Thing is, a muddy, rain-soaked field is often very, very biased.

Depending on a team’s playing style, a muddy field can either be a blessing or a curse.  Offenses predicated on speed depend on the ability to plant and cut quickly and precisely, which becomes less and less possible as the field progressively deteriorates.  For offenses built around the pass, like so many of the spread systems that have recently come into vogue, driving rain is a killer as it forces them to the ground.

While football has leaned more and more on the passing game in recent years, sometimes to the point of making your Bo Schembechler-type grind-it-out offenses look prehistoric (particularly in domed stadiums), the 2009 playoffs have served as a timely reminder of exactly why the wing-T has survived the test of time at the high school level.

The games are played outdoors.  In Michigan.  In November.

Editors note: This all goes out the window once a team makes it to Ford Field, of course.  The playoffs therefore become a test of a team’s ability to persevere in all conditions, which is as it should be.

Keep up with the latest football action and analysis by becoming a WMAS fan on Facebook, or join the conversation by following WMAS on Twitter.  Heck, even start your own topic over at Allstars Among Us.  The opportunities to connect with rabid high school sports fans are endless!

Zac Boersema (West Ottawa) — Marion Barber III

Boersma and the Panthers take no prisoners

Plenty a running back has made his living by making people miss.  More often than not, what it takes to be successful as a lead back — a running back who gets 75% or more of his teams carries — is the quickness not only to dart into and out of the holes your linemen create for you, but also the quickness to make an individual defender swing and miss when you’re one-on-one in the open field.

This type of quickness is a gift of shorter players, to be sure, as short legs are engineered better for quick movements.  Running back Marion Barber III is listed at 6-feet in the Dallas Cowboys program, making him in reality somewhere between 5-foot-9 and 5-foot-10, which is well within the range of the shorter, quicker backs.  The type of running back whose M.O. is making people miss.  Only, Barber doesn’t typically try to make people miss.  He would sooner take a knee than go past a defender without a collision.  Barber feeds off of contact and collision (awesome vid).  And here, I think, is the perfect place to introduce West Ottawa’s lead running back, Zac Boersema.

At 5-foot-6, one would think that Boersema also made his mark on the O-K Red by darting around people like a waterbug.  Maybe ducking down behind his offensive linemen, making himself small so defenders couldn’t find him.  Or sweeping around the outside, isolating cornerbacks on the perimeter and juking past them.

Nope.

Boersema doesn’t bother with all that tricksy stuff.  Forget making people miss, he just runs through defenders.  Like Barber, Boersema knows that the shortest path between the line-of-scrimmage and the first-down is a straight line.  And if 21 other players are in the way, so much the merrier.  Like “Marion the Barbarian” Barber, Boersema feeds off collisions.

At first glance, the short little 5-and-a-half foot running back running directly at much larger defenders would be a coach’s nightmare.  But it’s not that Boersema intentionally initiates contact with larger defenders.  It’s more that he simply runs straight, and makes sure that anyone between him and his goal pays for their mistake.  Even as small as he is, it only takes 10 or 12-broken tackles before even the staunchest opposition changes their mind about Boersema.

West Ottawa has compiled an undefeated 3-0 record against quality competition, and a large part of the credit for the Panthers’ record goes to their dominant defense.  But like the Bo Schembechler teams of old, the counterpoint to a great defense is a dominant, physical running game, and Boersema has that part handled.  “Dominant.”  “Physical.” “Aggressive.”  Those are all accurate adjectives for the diminutive back.  But perhaps the best word for the way Boersema runs is, “mean.”

While neither Boersema’s or Barber’s running style lends itself to a long, healthy career (there’s only so much beating a body can take, even if it is on the giving end 9-times out of 10), it certainly makes for exciting football in the meantime.  The next test will be in week-4 against undefeated Grand Haven and the Buccaneers’ standout defensive line.

Win, lose or draw, there will be bruises when Boersema’s involved.