L-BF senior named to honorable mention team as a running back

Littlefork-Big Falls senior Gage Klemetsen is following in the footsteps of his older brother Ian.

Just a season after Ian was named to the 2007 Minnesota Associated Press All-State prep football team, Gage earned the same honorable mention status as a running back on the 2008 squad.

“It was a good year,” Gage said Wednesday. “We played good as a team. That’s all that counted. No fighting.”

It’s hard to fight when you’re pummeling opponents into the turf.

The 2008 Vikings averaged 44.25 points a game and hit the ground running each week, piling up 4,212 yards rushing in 12 games, or an average of 351 a contest. And this was with most games decided by halftime.

Klemetsen, the Co-St. Louis County Back of the Year, spearheaded this rushing attack and finished with 1,782 yards on the ground with 15 touchdowns on only 175 carries. That’s an average of 10.2 yards a carry, or a first down a touch. To boot, he caught six passes for 151 yards and three touchdowns. That average? Only 25.2 yards per reception.

“He’s more than deserving,” L-BF coach Derek Bilben said. “He would tell you as well as I would our team obviously came first. The line did a great job for him.”

Klemetsen concurs, and one can only imagine how high his rushing totals would’ve been if the Vikings had played a competitive second half during the regular season.

In a 12-0 win over Tower-Soudan in L-BF’s closest regular season game, Klemetsen had 164 yards on 19 carries with a touchdown. He nearly doubled that in the loss to Ada-Borup in the state quarterfinals, racking up 270 yards on 20 carries with two touchdowns.

Every other game for the Vikings was decided early, limiting Klemetsen’s reps. His tough style of running still “took a toll on me,” he said.

Defensively, Klemetsen was one of the top defenders on a defense that had seven shutouts and surrendered only 3.6 points a game before the heart-breaking 28-26 loss to Ada-Borup, which jumped the average to 5.6 points. He led the team with four interceptions, finished tied for second with two fumble recoveries and was near the top with 69 tackles, including 13 1/2 in the state quarterfinals.

“We set some high goals and we accomplished all but one,” he said.

Klemetsen stopped playing baseball after his sophomore year and did the same with basketball after his junior year, giving him football as his lone commitment as a senior. He performed admirably and will remember “playing with the guys, the coaches, everything,” he said.

His coach echoed the same sentiment.

“This year was a special senior group for me and they’re great people,” Bilben said. “That’s what I remember, the relationships with them. ... That’s why I coach.”