MISQUAH — Pike beat Hinckley 21–13 Friday night in its home opener, and the number that matters is not 21 and it is not 13. It is the fourth-quarter touchdown that came after Hinckley had cut it to a single point, when this team’s entire recent history said it would take a knee on the situation and hope.

The green and gold led 14–7 at halftime on an evening cool enough that the third-base side of the bleachers — which is what everybody calls it here regardless of the sport being played — was in jackets by the second quarter. The first half was the line’s: Pike ran at Hinckley’s right side repeatedly and successfully, and head coach Ryan Mattox said afterward that he had gone in intending to run there and had not expected it to keep working past the first quarter.

Hinckley scored early in the fourth and converted, and the score sat at 14–13 for about four minutes, and Fifth Street could be heard from the field.

What Pike did then was take the ball and go seventy-one yards in nine plays, seven of them runs, and score. Then the defense put Hinckley out on its final possession — a series that ended on fourth down near midfield with a throw that had nowhere to go, and with every player on the Pike sideline standing on the bench, which is against a rule nobody enforces at a home opener.

Jon Sandbo, the sophomore center, took every offensive snap for the second consecutive week. Mattox, asked about him for the third time this month, said: “He is fifteen and he has played ninety-six snaps in two games and he has not made me think about him once. That is the highest thing I can say about a center.”

Mattox’s summary of the difference between Braham and Friday: “We survived that one until we didn’t. We finished this one. I am going to spend all week telling them those are different, and by Friday they will be tired of hearing it, and then we will find out at Sandstone.”

Pike is 1–1. The Bobcats — no. Pike goes to Sandstone Friday at 7, then comes home for homecoming against Pine City on the twenty-fifth, which is the night the gym has other business.

The statistics, for those who keep them: Pike ran forty-one times for two hundred sixty-three yards and threw nine passes, completing four. Hinckley threw twenty-nine times, which is what a team does when it is behind and then briefly almost ahead, and the Pike secondary — which was the question mark in August — gave up one long completion all night and it came on the drive that made it 14–13.

The touchdown that decided it came on a fourth-and-one at the Hinckley thirty-four, which Mattox called from the sideline without a timeout and which he described afterward, when pressed, as “not a difficult decision, if you have watched that line for two weeks.” Pike gained four. Three plays later it was 21–13.

Attendance was the largest home crowd since the 2023 homecoming, helped by a cool clear night, a 1–0 opponent and, by several accounts, a sign on the gym door promising pie. The junior class sold out of pie at 8:40 (see this page).

The evening had the small furniture of a first home game. The seniors’ parents worked the gate. The clock operator, who has done it since 2009, got it running late by ninety seconds and announced so over the microphone, unprompted, to laughter. The band played the fight song after both Pike touchdowns in the first half and, after the fourth-quarter one, played it twice because the drum line kept going.

Hinckley came in 1–0 and had beaten Pike four straight seasons before Friday, a fact Mattox said he did not mention to the team all week and that at least three players brought up unprompted afterward. “They knew,” he said. “They always know. You do not have to hang it on the wall.”

Pike goes to Sandstone Friday at 7. Sandstone is 2–0 and has outscored two opponents 62–14, which Sonny mentions here rather than in a preview, because there is no preview, because the game is Friday and this newspaper comes out on Tuesday.