Sports
Braves struggle in opener
Matthew Semisch
09/02/2014
ROLLA - Bottineau High’s football team began life in Class A just over a year ago and gave a good account of itself then in a hard-fought 47-37 loss at home to North Prairie.
The Braves opened with North Prairie again this season. When the two teams squared off last Tuesday in Rolla, though, the score wasn’t anywhere near as close as it’d been in their previous meeting.
The Cougars shook Bottineau off early on in the teams’ 2014 opener and never allowed the Braves back into what ended up as a 48-7 North Prairie win.
The brightest note for Bottineau was an 85-yard kick return for a touchdown in the final 90 seconds of the first half from Ethan Kerslake.
Bottineau continually hurt itself on Tuesday, though, with execution and penalty issues. Perhaps most glaring were four false starts in the first half alone that pushed the Braves’ offense back again and again.
“The whole team was disappointed with how we played,” Braves head coach Rob Bedlion said, “And we made way too many mistakes.
“Penalties, turnovers and execution errors are things that we (as coaches) really try to harp on about being better at at the start of the season, but I felt like we took a step back with that tonight.”
North Prairie had all the point production it needed by the end of the first quarter when it led 16-0.
A 20-yard fumble return from utility back Sean Soukup and a 48-yard touchdown pass from Tim Pfeifer – son of Dakota College at Bottineau head coach Tim Pfeifer – to Soukup gave the Cougars a big enough cushion to last them the rest of the game.
They weren’t done there. Eventually up 29-0 with just over four minutes left until halftime, North Prairie doubled its score before the break.
Pfeifer only played during the first two quarters against the Braves before North Prairie eventually put in its second and third-string quarterbacks. The Cougars’ No. 1 signal caller had a terrific first half, though, throwing three touchdown passes all before the interval.
Two of those strikes were for huge plays. Pfeifer hit wide receiver Casey Julson twice for touchdowns in that first half, and a 50-yard second touchdown hookup between the two put their team up 35-0.
Bottineau junior quarterback Brody Moum struggled by comparison in his first game under center for the Braves’ varsity team, going 5-for-13 through the air for 36 yards and three interceptions. Bedlion felt, however, that North Prairie had neutralized his whole team too cheaply.
“On both sides of the ball, we made it look easy for North Prairie in that first half,” Bedlion said. “We gave up some plays on defense where we know better, and on the offensive side we shot ourselves in the foot.
“We can’t do that, and we made too many things too easy for a good team.”
By gaining 98 yards in all, Bottineau’s ground game didn’t reap much better rewards than the Braves’ air attack did on the opening night of the season.
Adding literal insult to injury, Kerslake, who ended his night with 64 yards rushing on 12 carries apart from his touchdown, left the game in the second half with a sprained medial collateral ligament. The knee injury will keep see him shelved for three weeks.
With the Braves opening their season last Tuesday, their schedule gives them nine days to prepare for this Friday’s home opener against Region 3 rival Velva. Bedlion said that he hopes his team can take lessons from last week, learn from them and improve going forward.
“We’ve got a long way to go left with the year,” Bedlion said, “And we’ve got a lot to fix here in this week and a half before region play. That improvement is what we’ll expect to make.”