Sports

A newbie’s view on nine-man football

By Matthew Semisch

09/02/2014

Considering I moved to Bottineau this spring from a city of nearly half a million people, it was inevitable that I was going to have a fair amount of culture shock to feel my way through.

You would think, in the nearly five months that I’ve been here, that I’d have sorted that out by now. For the most part, I’d like to think that I have.

I say “for the most part” because life is so much about the element of the unknown. You never truly know with complete certainty what things life is going to throw at you.

Things like, for example, nine-man football.

In the part of the Great Plains that I come from, nine-man football is not a thing and, to my knowledge, never has been. Nor, in fact, is it in a lot of states, as it’s only currently played in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

On a personal level, before moving to Bottineau, 11-man was the only form of American football that I knew. My own high school, Millard North in Omaha, Neb., has a very proud tradition of it, having won four state titles and having produced a Heisman Trophy winner in Eric Crouch.

Just like here in North Dakota, though, not every high school football team in Nebraska plays 11-man. Eight-man football is a big deal in a lot of rural communities there, just as it is in 22 other states in the union.

My only real exposure to it, though, was when the Nebraska high school football state title games rolled around. The six 11-man classes and the eight-man class hold their championship games at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln and each one is televised statewide every year.

What would always catch my attention even more than the smaller amount of players on the field was the size of the field itself. The University of Nebraska Cornhuskers’ regulation-size turf of 120 yards by 53 yards was still there, but yellow lines were laid down just for the eight-man finals to mark down a smaller eight-man field.

Minnesota does this for eight-man, too, and states that play six-man football do the same.

What I noticed last Saturday at Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn’s (W-N-G) home opener against Kenmare-Bowbells-Burke Central (K-B-BC) was different from that. Instead, I discovered, the Sioux use a regulation-size field.

This isn’t an issue in most years. W-N-G was an 11-man team up until last year, and the Sioux will return to 11-man Class A football next fall.

While they’re in the smaller classification, though, the Sioux’s offense is making use of the wider spaces avilable to it.

W-N-G is becoming known this year for its ground game, and that begins with the Sioux’s offensive line. Once holes are opened up there in the trenches, there’s fewer defenders to evade and more daylight to run into.

Against the Honkers on Saturday, W-N-G used its surroundings to its advantage. Quarterback Reese Schell and running back Chase Conway combined for 267 yards rushing and five touchdowns, all on the ground.

In all, the Sioux’s ground attack gained 321 yards on Saturday against a K-B-BC defense that couldn’t handle what was in front of - and often behind - it.

Whether so many holes and so much open space will still be there next year, or even over the rest of this season, is yet to be seen. Thus far, though, the Sioux are taking advantage of what hard work and fate are providing.