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Despite the untimely turnovers, the mounting penalties and the uncharacteristic mental lapses, the Owatonna football team somehow — some way — found itself within striking distance of St. Thomas Academy late in the game on Saturday afternoon in a Class AAAAA state quarterfinal showdown.

After 36 minutes of high-stakes, back-and-forth action, the contest reached a pivotal juncture as the teams prepared to switch ends of the field and commence the final 12-minute stanza. At the time, St. Thomas was facing a 4th-and-short situation at its 29 yard line and had just seen its lead trimmed back down to two possessions on Owatonna’s previous drive.

Travis Walch suddenly found himself staring down the barrel of the most important decision in his young career as the Cadets’ rookie head coach. When the moment of truth inevitably rolled around, though, he didn’t flinch and confidently drew up a short-yardage play and sent his offense onto the field.

Surrounding the ball in a tightly-packed alignment, each of STA’s five offensive linemen and sinlge tight end crouched into a three-point stance and shielded a crammed offensive backfield that featured three running backs arranged in an inverted wishbone a mere feet behind their quarterback. With 10 of the 11 Cadet players positioned no more than three yards away from the ball in either direction, Walch threw caution, and subtilty, to the wind.

You can afford to do such things when Savion Hart is on our sideline.

“He’s a game-breaker,” Owatonna coach Jeff Williams said of Hart. “He doesn’t need much space to make something happen. He’s just a big play waiting to happen.”

Abruptly triggered by the snap of the ball and meeting Owatonna’s initial surge at the point of attack, the Cadets’ wall of blockers effectively protecting Hart as he took the handoff and angled toward an opening to his left. From there, he shimmied past a lunging would-be tackler and didn’t miss a beat as he maintained his trajectory toward the edge.

And that was all it took.

With nothing but daylight in front of him, Hart accelerated down the sideline, sprinted across midfield and raced toward his destination on the far end of the stadium, easing into a leisurely stroll for the final 7-10 yards before finally gliding to a stop in the back of the end zone.

And just like that, the last few scraps of momentum the Huskies might have been clinging slipping out of their grasp, vanishing in the wake of Hart’s 71-yard touchdown gallop on the first snap of the fourth quarter. The teams went on to trade touchdowns in the game’s final five minutes — Hart adding a second fourth down scoring run at the 3:03-mark — and the Cadets’ had their ticket to The Bank with a 46-28 victory.

When all was said and done at Woodbury High School , the teams had combined for 10 touchdowns, 74 points and a collective 913 yards of total offense .

“We are not a team that can simply line up and punch people in the mouth,” Williams said. “So it’s one of those deals where we need to play at a lower pad level. We needed to hunker down and fire off the ball and use our leverage. But then all the sudden Hart is around the edge and in the open field. There’s no one that is going to catch him when he reaches top speed.”

In a cruel premonition of things to come, Owatonna (8-3) lost a fumble on the game’s opening snap and finished with a season-high four giveaways, half of which St. Thomas instantly transformed into touchdowns. Adding to its troubles, the Huskies failed to force a turnover of their own for the first time since Week 7 of the regular season and were penalized nine times for 98 yards.

“We were able to hang in there and get within a couple scores throughout the game, but, ultimately, we failed to get enough stops and turned the ball over too many times,” Williams said. “I think it came to a point where our kids tried to overcompensate a little when we fell behind and I thought they maybe tried to do a little more than they were capable to try and stop (St. Thomas).”

St. Thomas (9-2) came into the game having thoroughly dismantled its previous two postseason opponents — outscoring Two Rivers and Bloomington Jefferson by a combined score of 90-28 — and had rang up no fewer than four touchdowns in any single game all season. Hart accounted for 271 of the Cadets’ 298 rushing yards while senior quarterback, Maximus Sims, finished a perfect 6-for-6 to go with 145 yards and one touchdown.

Though the Huskies trailed for roughly 98% of the 48-minute affair, the fact they remained within reasonable striking distance for as long as they did was an impressive feat and made possible by a passing attack that simply carved up the Cadets secondary.

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The defeat signified the final act in an otherwise memorable and thrilling campaign that left an indelible mark on the program’s single-game, single-season and career record books and was aptly commenced with a historic evening on Sept. 1 that saw the Huskies christen their dazzling new home stadium with a resounding victory over Hastings in Week 1.

Quickly finding his mojo as a passer and leading the Huskies’ overall operation on so many levels was third-year quarterback, Jacob Ginskey. On Saturday, the senior tossed three touchdowns and compiled 431 passing yards, leaving him just 20 yards shy of tying Abe Havelka’s single-game school record set in 2018 against Brainerd. For the season, he racked up 2,547 passing yards and finished his career with 4,201, both of which are No. 2 on the all-time Owatonna list.

Jacob’s younger brother, Nolan Ginskey, fastened an equally-dazzling campaign and stood less than 50 yards behind Noah Budach’s single-season program record for receiving yards prior to the state quarterfinals, and the electrifying junior wasted little time jumping to the top of the list.

With the Huskies trailing 15-0 and in desperate need of a spark, Ginskey snatched a short pass out of the backfield, knifed through the teeth of the STA defense and outran a pack of white jerseys into the end zone for a 69-yard touchdown with 5 minutes, 1 second left in the first quarter. He went on to add a second receiving touchdown in the fourth quarter and finished with a staggering 12 catches for 194 yards. His 1,194 yards and 73 receptions both set new single-season school records.

“He’s a home run hitter,” Williams said of Nolan Ginskey. “Every time he gets the ball in his hands, he can take it all the way, and we did a nice job of getting him the ball with enough space to operate and create mismatches. He is really fun to watch.”

Senior Caleb Hullopeter also saved one of his best performances for last as he hauled-in a career-best 10 catches to go with 168 yards, landing him at 738 yards for the season and 1,140 for his career, both numbers comfortably placing him within the top 10 of the all-time school record lists.

“It was neat to see him come back after the injury he sustained against Apple Valley (in Week 8) and have a big receiving night,” Williams said. “He found space, broke some tackles and made some big plays for us. It was a nice capstone to his career.”

In a stark omen of the misfortune that would beset the Huskies all day, Jacob Ginskey lost control of the ball on the first play of the contest when attempting to escape a slew of St. Thomas defenders pursuing from all angles just beyond the line of scrimmage.

Linebacker Cade Caruso was the first one to meet Ginskey and promptly jarred the ball loose with a hard tackle, lowering his shoulder and slamming into the OHS quarterback near the home sideline. Finding himself in just the right place at just the right time, Teddy Knapp alertly plucked the pigskin out of mid-air, rumbled forward and pin-balled out of bounds just inside the 17.

Less than a minute later, Hart was cutting through a crease on the left side and scoring the first of his five total touchdowns on the day. Making matters worse, OHS was whistled for an encroachment penalty on the ensuing extra point and the Cadets tacked on the 1.5-yard two-point conversion to make it 8-0 less than 90 seconds into the opening quarter. After forcing the only Owatonna punt of the game on the ensuing possession, St. Thomas Academy needed just four plays to march 68 yards and extend their lead to 15-0 after Hart escaped for a 32-yard run at 5:41.

“It’s a gut punch,” Williams said. “We basically had to play catchup for the entire game.”

Owatonna eventually regained its composure and out-scored the Cadets 14-3 during a 10-minute stretch that spanned parts of two quarters, drawing as close as it would all game at 18-14 after Brennen Sletten sliced into the end zone from four yards out midway through the second quarter to culminate a fruitful 80-yard scoring march.

But as they did all game, St. Thomas promptly answered the bell and stitched together an 80-yard scoring drive of its own and tallied the final seven points of the first half when Chase Young hauled-in a 15-yard TD pass from Sims with 5:31 remaining on the clock.

“(Sims) is a very good quarterback,” Williams said. “When you can run effectively and have a kid who can deliver the ball like that, the play-action pass becomes devastating.”

The Cadets expanded their lead to 32-14 on the opening possession of the third quarter when Hart capped the 5-minute, 31-second series with a 1-yard TD run. The drive featured 10 snaps, six first downs and five plays of at least 10 yards.

Owatonna, though, once again regrouped and immediately countered with a 13-play, 71-yard drive that was capped by a 10-yard Ginskey touchdown pass to Jack Strom. The Huskies went for two points and successfully converted a halfback pass, but the play was nullified by a holding penalty and Seth Johnson’s elongated PAT missed the mark, keeping the scoreboard frozen at 32-20.

“I knew we were going to fight back,” Williams said. “I was so impressed with the amount of resiliency that I saw from our kids throughout the season, and Saturday was no different.”

St. Thomas — which will meet undefeated Alexandria (11-0) in the state semifinals on Friday at 2 p.m. inside U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis — collected four sacks and allowed just 39 rushing yards.

The Cadets’ only punt of the second half — and their second of two for the entire game — was a low-flying kick that was booted near the STA 10 yard line, landed around midfield and proceeded to roll all the way to the Owatonna 31, successfully flipping the field and spanning 54 yards.

Defensively, Juniors Blake Davison and Jamie Lisowski combined for 20 tackles while Mitch Seykora and Blake Fitcher added six stops apiece.

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