Sports
Sioux buck Chucks
Matthew Semisch
10/07/2014
WESTHOPE - The North Dakota nine-man football Region 3 standings have been tight at the top all season. That much certainly wasn’t lost on Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn (W-N-G) last Friday.
The Sioux came into its game that evening against third-ranked St. John in third place at 5-1, two spots behind the Woodchucks in the teams’ region. St. John arrived in Westhope undefeated at 6-0 and was hoping to cement its place at the top of the region standings.
In the end, that didn’t happen.
Instead, the underdogs from W-N-G controlled the game throughout, scoring the game’s first 14 points before holding off the Woodchucks well enough in the second half to wrap up a 34-18 victory.
With the win, the Sioux bumped their record on the year to 6-1. W-N-G, St. John and Towner-Granville-Upham (T-G-U) are all now 6-1, but T-G-U holds a head-to-head points tiebreaker over the other two.
W-N-G head coach Tom Nesvold came away happy with his team’s performance on Friday. Following a rough 36-14 loss on the road at T-G-U on Sept. 26, Nesvold found himself pleased with the Sioux’s ability to bounce back and perform well in a second high-pressure game in as many weeks.
“We came with intensity and played hard and good things happened,” Nesvold said. “We got into a situation where we had to win by so many for power points, and winning that game moved us up to second into the region, and that would give us a home playoff game, and we’re looking better there now.”
Both of W-N-G’s touchdowns in Friday’s first half came on the ground. Smash-mouth power football seemed to be the order of the day early on, and running back Chase Conway was handed the responsibility of making sure that was administered.
He came through, too, scoring in the first half two of his three touchdowns on the night. The first came on an eight-yard sweep down the sideline in the first quarter before he scored again up the middle on a three-yard burst with 3:41 left in the second.
“We definitely wanted to run the ball, and we had success with it,” Nesvold said. “Running the ball keeps their offense off the field and that helps our defense out.
“We can kind of control the game a little bit better that way, and St. John has a few athletes that can do real damage against you so we had to pick and choose what we did, but if we can run the ball, we want to run the ball.”
St. John’s defense began blitzing more in the second half to try and stop the Sioux on the ground. However, that led to easy seam passes up the middle and thus another way for the Sioux to maraud up the field.
W-N-G quarterback Reese Schell especially took advantage of this in the fourth quarter.
St. John got back into the contest by scoring all 18 of its points in the second half. However, the Sioux were able to put the game to bed through 38-yard and 58-yard connections between Schell and W-N-G wide receiver Chance Kitzman in the final period.
“St. John started to send rushers a lot more (in the second half), and that left the seam passes up the middle open,” Nesvold said, “We caught them on a couple of blitzes and were able to throw the ball up there.”
Schell finished the game 8-for-14 passing for 181 yards and two touchdowns. He also ran the ball 22 times for another 56 yards.
Conway led the Sioux in rushing with 177 yards and three scores on 36 carries. Kitzman was W-N-G’s leading receiver with five catches for 119 yards and his two scores.
The top two teams in each of the four nine-man regions will play host to a first-round state playoff game. With that in mind, it appears W-N-G has a very favorable remaining schedule.
The Sioux host Drake-Anamoose (1-6) on Friday in Glenburn before visiting Parshall-White Shield (0-7) Oct. 18.