Men drop the ball

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
The Dogies followed up last weekend’s 32-6 victory over the Moorcroft Wolves with a road game against the 1A Tigers of Lusk on Friday. Unfortunately, what could go wrong did and the Dogies limped away from the contest with an 8-60 point loss.
“When the wheels fell off the wagon, they flew off and we were on the skids right away,” head coach Matt Conzelman sighed. “We didn’t give them our best shot, so we are going to have to fix that going forward,”
The trouble began before either team even took the field as a 30-minute lightning delay had each squad cooling their heels in the locker room. When they finally were cleared to play, the Dogies were on the receiving end of the opening kick-off.
The first series of the contest went very well for the Dogies as they scored twice, with the first touchdown being called back due to a holding penalty. On that play, Bradyn Frye connected with Aidan Chick on a 20-yard pass which the sophomore then turned into a 70-yard scamper into the endzone. 
“It was a great, tough catch that Aidan made,” Conzelman began. “It went right over the top of the defender and he grabbed it, broke free and ran it into the endzone.”
Though certainly disappointed that the effort was for naught, Newcastle took advantage of the momentum they had gained to convert the next play into a goal.
“It worked out really well actually,” Conzelman declared. “We were looking for [Christian] Santos coming through on the first look, but Slade [Roberson] got pushed out of the pocket and onto the sideline. That’s when he saw Bradyn and fired the ball down to him.”
After Frye caught the 20-yard pass, he took off on a 50-yard jaunt downfield and punched it into the endzone to get on the board first. With the knowledge that the Tigers would go for two in the event of a touchdown, the Dogies decided to do the same and Frye once again was the ball carrier on the successful attempt to move his team to an 8-0 lead.
“After we got the touchdown and the two-point conversion on our first series, we felt like we were in business,” Conzelman exclaimed. “But after that, we just did not have an answer for what they brought.”
Newcastle struggled to stop the Tigers defensively, and offensively the Dogies were getting so much pressure that they couldn’t seem to get anything going there either. 
Lusk scored on their possession following the Newcastle touchdown, but failed to get the two-point conversion. With the score then 8-6 in favor of the Dogies, Conzelman felt like his team was still in pretty good shape. However, on the possession immediately following the Lusk TD, Roberson threw an interception. While it wasn’t a pick-six situation, the Tigers did go on to score after regaining possession of the ball. 
The Dogies went into the locker room down 40-8 at the halftime mark, and came out to face a strong head wind in the third quarter. The escalating aversive conditions of the contest led Conzelman to communicate the bigger issues facing his squad at the mid-game mark.
“I told the guys in the locker room that when you’re winning, you don’t really get to see people’s character very often.  When the chips are down and everything is going wrong, that’s when it shows,” he nodded. “I wanted to know who was going to be the warrior and the fighter and who was going to be fleeing from the adversity? We had a lot of adversity on Friday night, so I wanted to know who my warriors were going to be.” 
“Possibly some Dogie fans came in late, and would see on the scoreboard that we were getting our tails whipped, but I wanted them to see us on the field still fighting and working hard,” he continued. “If we can take anything from this, the wins and losses aren’t all that matters, but we need to make sure that we are playing to our potential every ball whether that’s on offense or defense or special teams. When you play like that and still lose, it’s easier to take, but when you don’t do that and you don’t execute, it makes it a little harder to swallow.”
Newcastle would go on to succumb to the 45-point mercy rule so played the fourth quarter with a running clock on the way to the 8-60 loss.
“There’s a lot of teams at all levels who got their tails whipped last week, so we have to decide how we’re going to come back from this because it can always get worse,” Conzelman forewarned. “We have three solid opponents coming up that we have to figure out how to play against, so we’re going to be working on
doing that.”
The Dogies will travel to Thermopolis to play a tough Bobcat team on Friday, which is also their last road game of the season.