Mike Mattson | Daily Press North Central’s Austin Poupore (11) runs down North Dickinson’s Brandon Steinbrecher (34) on a kickoff return in Thursday’s season opener at Powers.

POWERS — One of Anthony McVay’s favorite movies is “The Waterboy.”

It’s a movie starring Adam Sandler, who’s a little-known waterboy named Bobby Boucher on a winning college football team. Boucher gets fired as the waterboy, but joins a losing rival college team to become an intense, full-throttle, hard-hitting linebacker. And he leads the Mud Dogs into championship contention.

McVay, a junior defensive lineman on the North Central football team, calls “The Waterboy” one of his three favorite movies. And why not, because his coaches and teammates refer to McVay as “Bobby Boucher.” They’ve been calling him Bobby since ninth grade when he started flying around the Jets’ football field.

“I don’t stop,” McVay said Thursday night after the Jets welcomed visiting North Dickinson to the world of eight-man football with a 60-0 shellacking.

“I keep pushing myself. I never take breaks. You just have to keep going and do what you have to do. We did what we needed to do (tonight) and pushed ourselves.”

Boucher, I mean McVay, led the way for the Jets’ defense with eight tackles, one sack and 2.5 stops for lost yardage.

And so the North Central football season began with yet another large victory.

A squad of mainly little-known names picked up where the Jets left off last season.

They recorded the school’s 28th straight football victory and served notice that another eight-man football title just might go through Powers again.

After two straight state championships and the graduation of a talented senior class, some folks thought the jig might be up. The win streak will end soon. The best memories would be made by other teams.

But North Central took it to the Nordics from the opening kickoff and never let up. Whitens, Kleiman, Krachinski, Plunger, Poupore and Belongie may be gone, but many new guys stepped up.

“We lost a lot of really good players, but we also gained a few great players,” said senior Lucas Dombrowski, the fiery linebacker who had five tackles and caught two touchdown passes. “We had a new starting line come out this year. They stepped up. They showed themselves tonight on defense. I thought they went out there and dominated.

“We didn’t have many flaws or many mistakes on defense. Everything was there. Everything was there on offense. We just have to keep working hard and hopefully we can get where we were last year.”

North Central is one big target for every opponent lined up on the other side of the field. They all want to be the team to take down the Jets.

On this night, North Central looked especially sharp on defense. The Jets’ quickness and speed will give a lot of teams problems.

Hunter Riley also looked sharp taking over the offense at quarterback. He is a solid dual-threat quarterback who should help the Jets put up plenty of points on the scoreboard.

When it comes to win streaks, the Jets have a long way to go on the gridiron. The state record is 72 by Hudson, which saw Ishpeming end that streak in the 1975 state championship game.

Recently, Ithaca reeled off 69 straight wins before falling in a 2014 state title game.

In Wisconsin, Kimberly currently has the nation’s longest streak of 57 after pulling out a 35-28 win last Friday against Fond du Lac.

Who knows how long the Jets can keep their streak going? I’m sure Forest Park, Rapid River and Stephenson are some teams who will have a say, starting with the Trojans next Friday night.

It really is a one-game-at-a-time journey for North Central.

Expect this new-look team with many little-known names to keep playing with an intense mindset like Boucher, I mean McVay.

“We just have to keep pushing ourselves and keep going,” McVay said. “Everybody is doing good. We just have to keep going and keep doing the same thing every week.”

Added Dombrowski: “We have no pressure. Everybody is looking down on us. But I think we can show up and play our best and win some more ball games.”