White Bear Lake was inside the red zone, trailing by six in the fourth quarter when star quarterback Oluwatomi Animasaun sustained an injury that forced him to exit the contest on fourth down.

That left the Bears with their backup signal caller in a must-convert situation. But it was a Farmington star making the game-altering play in the clutch moment.

Farmington’s Danny Sather, a Minnesota-Duluth commit, was tracking the eyes of the quarterback and flowing with him as he exited out of the pocket. He read the pass, saw the ball in the air and pounced.

Tigers coach Jon Pieper was thinking one thing: “I wanted him to bat the darn thing down.”

“Never, never,” Sather said. “Can’t bat down a ball like that. Never.”

Instead, he picked it off near the goal-line and returned it 98 yards for a score, shedding multiple potential tacklers along the way to put the Tigers up 19-6 in the final frame.

“I saw some open field, tried to run it up and I had to take it to the end zone,” Sather said. “I had to score six.”

“I guess we’re never going to complain,” Pieper conceded with a smile.

Farmington then forced a stop, and proceeded to march its ensuing drive down for a chip-shot field goal with 3 minutes to go to secure a 22-6 victory and move to 3-0 on the season for the first time since 2020.

The Tigers led for much of the night, utilizing an intriguing single-wing offense in which it has four players in the backfield out of a shotgun formation. Multiple different players could take the ball on any single snap, with various potential handoffs.

Farmington is running the ball 40-plus times per game, and Friday was no different, as the Tigers tallied 44 totes for 348 yards.

“I feel like we dominated the game in terms of physicality, and that was the No. 1 goal that we had out here today,” Pieper said. “In offense, defense and special teams, I truly feel like they brought a level of physicality today that we’re really proud to call Farmington football.”

The Tigers scored on their first drive of the night as Christopher Rehak — who finished with 16 carries for 155 yards — ran in a 31-yard score.

But White Bear Lake’s defensive front held up relatively well for much of the night from there, keeping the Bears in the game.

“Our defense, I thought, hung in pretty good,” Bears coach Ryan Bartlett said. “We got beat up a little bit, but we would fight back at the end.”

But Bartlett noted the offense and special teams didn’t do the defense any favors throughout the season. White Bear Lake (2-1) struggled in the kicking game, and its dynamic offense seemed to be inches away from a big play for much of the night, with deep passing glancing off the fingertips of receivers at various points.

But the plays were there to potentially be made, which is an encouraging sign for White Bear Lake as it heads into what’s expected to be a competitive Metro East slate with the athletes to make some serious noise. The Bears’ potential, Bartlett noted, “is high.”

“You see it in spurts where you’re like, ‘Jeez, they’re pretty good,’” Bartlett said of his guys. “We’re just such a rollercoaster. We’ve talked all week about consistency, and then we were the opposite of consistency. That’s what’s frustrating to me. (The Tigers) didn’t do that, and we did.”

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