As Manchester High School football coach Wes Gall was giving his team an extra long scolding after Thursday night's 34-20 loss to Michigan Center, you could not help but notice the irony taking place on the other end of the stadium.

Michigan Center's bus was pulling away from the Flying Dutchmen's home field with sounds of laughter and singing echoing from the dark horizon. It was a stark contrast to the lecture about respecting an opponent and coming ready to play that Gall was delivering to his team.

Michigan Center (2-0, 1-0 Cascades Conference) capitalized on Manchester's miscues, came up with several big plays on offense and added a punt return for a touchdown as Manchester saw its 10-game Cascades Conference winning streak come to an end. The Flying Dutchmen (1-1, 0-1 Cascades) had not lost a conference game since Sept. 2008 against Addison.

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"I think our defense got tired because our offense wasn't taking care of the ball," said Gall after Manchester threw two interceptions and fumbled the ball away three times, all three fumbles coming in the third quarter. "You can't do that to your defense. You have got to give them a little break."

The result is sort of what Gall expected after what he called a terrible week of practice. He pulled out many of his veteran coaching moves to help get his team out of its funk, but to no avail.

After the game, he gathered the team on the field and talked. And talked. And talked, hoping to get his message across, albeit a little late.

"I did everything I knew how to do this week to get them to concentrate better except throw the bucket at them," Gall said. "They have to own up. We were at them first thing Monday when they were sort of dogging it and not getting their jobs done as a team. We practiced an extra half hour that day and we talked about it after practice.

"And the next day we were in the same lethargic motions ... I felt our kids did not come ready to practice and therefore it showed in the game."

The Flying Dutchmen's defense had a difficult time stopping Michigan Center quarterback Derek Dowding. The senior threw for 205 yards and a touchdown and ran for another 77 yards and a score.

He had five pass plays of more than 20 yards and hooked up with receiver Zach Jones six times for 120 yards.

"Their quarterback made some great plays to get them out of some situations," Gall said. "And that was one of the concerns we had because last year he got away from us a few times but we were able to win the game. He's got the strength of a fullback at quarterback and he moves pretty well."

Michigan Center's first big scoring play came late in the first quarter. After Manchester scored on a 12-yard pass from Nate Bossory to Josh Blades, Michigan Center's Korey Stewart ran through the Dutch defense for 21 yards and a 7-6 lead.

Jones made it 13-6 after he caught a punt and went up the left side for a 64-yard return. A few minutes later, Jones intercepted a pass to set up Dowding's five-yard run.

With a minute to go in the first half, Manchester cut the lead when Bossory found Brandon Casey in the end zone on a 15-yard scoring pass. Bossory finished 24-of-39 for 252 yards and two touchdowns. Receivers Blades and Brandon Casey each had more than 100 receiving yards.

Michigan Center returned the second of three Manchester fumbles in the third quarter to the 10-yard line. It took Dowding just two plays to score from five yards out and extend his team's lead to two touchdowns.

Alex Wallace's interception set up Bossory's one-yard quarterback sneak on the first play of the fourth quarter, but Michigan Center came back when Stewart took a screen pass over the middle from Dowding and broke through some tackles before rambling 46 yards for the final score of the night.

"I don't think they believed in their heart that we were telling the truth about how good this team was," Gall said about his team. "As you can see by how (Michigan Center) acted (after the game) that was the World Series to them. Coach gets a bath, they're jumping around. They still have seven games to play.

"That's what we told the kids. Any time a team beats us it makes their season. We have to win all the games to have a season."

Dave Holzman can be reached at daveholz@comcast.net.