GHS Football had their hopes for a final chance at a home game victory dashed last Friday as they lost against Sioux Valley.
Sioux Valley had a pretty excellent season of 6-1 vs Garretson’s 2-5. Expectations were for a difficult game, and Coach Chris Long said he was proud of his team.
“We asked our guys to prepare and play their best game of the season and they responded,” Long said. “We had a fantastic defensive effort and did some good things on offense as well. We have to find a way to make a couple big plays, especially in the passing game to help us out offensively and that is the one thing we missed on Friday.”
Sioux Valley lit up the board first after slogging, and finally pushing through the Blue Dragon defense, scoring a two-point conversion in the first quarter. GHS offense pushed again and again, but just couldn’t get the yardage they needed for a touchdown. At the tail end of the second quarter they were in range for a field goal and Cody Erikson once again came through for the Blue Dragons, and lit up the scoreboard for the only Blue Dragon points in the game.
Dragon defense stayed tight the rest of the game, not giving Sioux Valley many opportunities, and kept them from scoring again until the final quarter, where GHS denied them the two-point conversion and left the score 3-14.
“Dominic Abraham had a nice night running the football and our offensive line,” said Long, “once we figured some things out, he did some good work up front along with Jake Schroeder leading the way from the fullback spot. We’ll need to be able to run the football and mix in the pass on Thursday."
The Blue Dragons travel to Winner for the first game of the post-season.
“Winner has a really good team and obviously a great tradition,” said Coach Long. “It will be a challenge going there for the 1st round but I’m confident our guys will be able to rise to the occasion and again, play our best game. Looking at film we feel like there are things we can do on both sides of the ball that will give us our best chance at being successful.”
“Big thanks to our parents and fans throughout the season,” he said. “It’s been hard to see us able to compete with everyone we played but still not able to come out on top more often. We’ve battled injuries, sickness along with other obstacles but our guys continued to show up to practice and work hard and that’s hats off to them.”
