Sports

Better together

By Matthew Semisch

09/23/2014

Although they currently play with different numbers of personnel on the football field, the teams from Bottineau High and Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn (W-N-G) have met before on the gridiron.

They’ll meet at least twice more, first next year and then again in 2016. Those two occasions, however, will mean considerably more than their two prologues did.

The North Dakota High School Activities Association (NDHSAA) approved last Tuesday preliminary classifications for the 2015 and 2016 football seasons. Where Bottineau County’s two teams are concerned, it had previously been known that W-N-G would be moving up from nine-man to 11-man football, but Tuesday’s announcement saw the Sioux pooled into the 11-man Region 3 with Bottineau.

The new regions are subject to change, but there isn’t much time to rework them. Other teams that wish to declare to move up to a higher division have until next Tuesday to do so, and the NDHSAA’s board of directors is expected to finalize the new classifications at the group’s meeting on Oct. 15.

As things stand, the new 11-man Region 3 will be made up of Bottineau, Des Lacs-Burlington, Lewis and Clark-Our Redeemer’s, Minot Bishop Ryan, Velva and W-N-G.

To a degree, Region 3 as it’s been known the past two years will be broken up. Harvey-Wells County and Rugby will move to Region 2 next year and Surrey will go down to nine-man.

Also heading down to nine-man next year is Williams County, which is dissolving its co-op to form two nine-man teams in Ray and Tioga.

North Dakota’s nine-man division is getting its own pretty big makeover. Most of W-N-G’s current nine-man Region 3 rivals are moving to a new Region 6, which is coming into being thanks to the reshuffle and current 11-man teams like Surrey moving down to nine-man.

North Prairie, Bottineau’s opponent on the first week of this season, is also moving down to nine-man from the current 11-man Region 2.

Bottineau and W-N-G met on the gridiron in both 2011 and 2012 during the first cycle in which both teams played 11-man football. Neither of those games had regional implications, however, as Bottineau was in Class AA at the time while W-N-G was in Class A.

Dates for the teams’ next two clashes have not yet been determined.

Both of their previous meetings were on the first week of the  2011 and 2012 seasons, and the Bottineau Braves came up victorious both times.

W-N-G head coach Tom Nesvold said that his group, which was new to 11-man football in 2011, wasn’t prepared for what it saw against the Braves.

“We played them first time out in our two 11-man seasons from before and got beat,” Nesvold said, “And I think both times we might’ve got caught not ready to play.

“We improved a lot from there on, though, and that’s only continued.”

When asked for his thoughts on the chance for the Braves and Sioux to develop a new intra-region, intra-county rivalry, Nesvold said he’s relishing that opportunity along with others that the new classifications are set to create.

“I’m generally pretty happy with how the reclassifications are looking,” Nesvold said. “It will be good for us in terms of starting some new rivalries and seeing again a few 11-man teams we’d seen before, and Bottineau  ticks both of those boxes for us.

“Having old rivalries obviously makes those games that much more special and that much more important to you when they roll around, but new rivalries with teams like Bottineau are going to be a new challenge and something fun for us and for (Bottineau) and for a lot of people in this county to look forward to.”

On top of playing against W-N-G again, Bottineau will be reunited with another familiar foe in former Class AA West Region rival Bishop Ryan.

Where it concerns meeting up again with the Sioux of W-N-G, though, Braves head coach Rob Bedlion said that there’s a lot of potential for that new rivalry. What’s more, he’s looking forward to seeing what kind of buzz that more meaningful Braves-Sioux games will create amongst football fans in Bottineau County.

“It’s definitely going to be a game that a lot of people are going to pay attention to and that a lot of people are going to come watch, and that’s what you want,” he said. “We played them twice before and beat them twice but they were both very close games, and I’m sure they’d like to get on the winning end of that rivalry as soon as possible, and we’ll form as good if not better of a rivalry with them as we have with Rugby and Bishop Ryan and other teams around here like that.

“Us and Westhope be very well-followed here, and I think that’s a rivalry idea that has wheels,” Bedlion continued. “I think that, if it can stay around for a while, those would be good games for us.”