It was a rough first game of the season for Blue Dragon football, final score against the Webster Bearcats was 0-20. That is not to say that the Blue Dragons gave up easy.
For the entire first quarter the score remained nil on the board. A lot of back and forth on the field. The Blue Dragons made some solid plays, and showed some good initiative. But there was most certainly a factor of first game jitters.
"Overall we did some good things,” said coach Chris Long. “We have a lot of inexperience on the field right now and that takes game reps and competition to figure those things out. We’ll continue to get better as long as we stay focused in practice and work to apply what we learn to the field on Friday nights. I thought defensively we were pretty good, and that is what we had expected. We struggled offensively which is what we also expected because we only returned one starter on that side of the ball. Some special team plays turned the momentum of the game, so we have to address that aspect this week in practice."
And the game stats pan out to show that strong defense. In the first quarter and third quarters, there were no scores on the board, and the Dragons were able to stop several Bearcat advances up the field.
The Wildcats had a better rushing game, gaining an average of 7.2 yards per rush on the 30 rushes they made whereas the Dragons had 29 rushes, only gaining 2.5 yards per rush. Even so, it’s worth mentioning that Dominic Abraham rushed for a total of 24 yards for the Dragons this game, with Dylan Kindt rushing for 19 yards and Rave Uhlich for 17 yards.
Garretson certainly had a better passing game, gaining 83 yards on with 7 complete passes compaired to the 3 complete passes of Webster with only 15 yards gained. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention a serendipitous 61 yard catch by Cole Skadsen.
However, the constant yard gain with a few breakaway moments for Webster gained them three touchdowns. Solid kicking from Webster’s Jacob Pereboom gained the Bearcats 2 out of three extra points (one kick was blocked by Blue Dragon defense). This combined with some very long punts from Webster’s Matthew Block (101 yards in total) just kept setting the Blue Dragon offense back.
This Friday the Blue Dragons will face Woonsocket/Wessington.
“"We won't be adding anything new for practice this week, we just have to work on what we are doing and get ready for WSWSC,” said Long. “They are always a good team and well prepared, so we will have all we can handle come Friday."
