Dogies secure No. 2 seed

The Newcastle Dogies are rolling their way into the 2A playoffs, and Friday they once again went into a vital contest against the Bulldogs in Wheatland. Head coach Matt Conzelman’s crew left no question that they deserved the No. 2 seed in the 2A East football conference with their dominating 40-13 victory.

“It was a great win and a total team effort, and I’m really proud of them,” Conzelman said, grinning. “All week long I really didn’t know what to expect because they (Wheatland) are the third-ranked defense in 2A and we run the same offense, so I just wasn’t sure. But it worked out pretty good.”

Heading into the night, the Dogies knew they were facing a team who was as close to a mirror image of themselves as it can get. The Bulldogs are a run-heavy team and play a “smash-mouth” game, as described by Conzelman.

“Yeah, Wheatland kind of stole our offense,” quarterback Teddy Troftgruben said. “We knew they were going to be physical, but we also knew exactly what they were going to do. It turns out that we were still able to do what we needed to do though, even though they knew our offense.”

From the opening kickoff, the Dogies brought it against the Bulldogs. Newcastle received to start the contest and Connor Stohlhammer was off to the races returning the ball 60 yards to give the Dogies great field position in their opening possession.

Four plays later, Landon Hatheway punched the ball into the end zone for the first touchdown of the night. Cole Erb was right on target with the point after touchdown to give the Dogies an early
7-0 lead.

All night, the Dogies took possession of the ball in great field position to set up
scoring drives.

“I think there was only one drive where we actually had to cover some ground,” Conzelman said. “Our defense just did a great job of stopping them and we just got ourselves in a pretty favorable position.”

Collin McConkey was the next Dogie to score, doing so with an eight yard scamper, then Hatheway bookended the quarter with another touchdown. Erb was good on the McConkey touchdown PAT, then McConkey was thwarted on his two-point conversion attempt after Hatheway’s TD, giving the Dogies the 20-0 lead to end the first frame of play.

In the second quarter, Dane Crabtree took it to the house on a 34-yard touchdown run and Erb was good on the PAT.

The Dogies went into the half up 27-0, and came back out still on a mission to hold the Bulldogs at bay.

“I thought Teddy had a knockout game,” Conzelman said. “He had 10 carries for 111 yards, he went 4-5 on pass completions for 59 yards, and he had two touchdowns.”

Troftgruben scored his two touchdowns in the second half. The first was a 21-yard cruise into the end zone in the third quarter, and the second was a 15-yard run in the fourth. Erb went one-for-two on the PATs.

“Once again, I had great blocks and our offensive game plan was just really effective in opening up pathways for us,” Troftgruben explained. “Both of my touchdowns were really pretty easy because of that.”

The Bulldogs were finally able to get on the board late in the fourth quarter when they wrangled themselves two touchdowns. Though they were good on the first PAT, the second attempt was unsuccessful, resulting in a big Dogie victory of 40-13.

With the No. 2 seed securely in place, the Dogies earned the advantage of hosting the first round of 2A East Playoffs on Friday, and will welcome to Schoonmaker Field the Panthers of Cokeville. This is the first home playoff game for the Dogies since 2014, with kickoff scheduled for 6 p.m.

“They are very disciplined but are very similar to us. We maybe have a bit of an advantage because we have several guys who can carry the ball, while they rely on one guy pretty much for all of their yardage,” Conzelman said. “They are coming in with a winning tradition, but we plan to come in with a good game plan and just need to execute. We just need to rise above the rest. Go Dogies!”

Because this game is a post-season conference match-up, there will be a cost to attend the game, which is $5 for adults and $3 for students/children. The school district has posted a QR code on the district website and on Facebook to purchase tickets early.