Sports

Sioux rough up Raiders

By Matthew Semisch

10/14/2014

GLENBURN - At this late stage of the high school football regular season, all teams can worry about is handling their own business.

Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn did that on Friday in a big way.

Drake-Anamoose (D-A) was the Sioux’s Senior Night opponent in Glenburn. The Raiders weren’t allowed to stick around long in the contest, though, as W-N-G rolled to a 48-0 victory.

The win allowed the Sioux to bump their record on the season to 7-1. This allowed W-N-G to stay in an effective three-way tie with St. John and Towner-Granville-Upham (T-G-U) atop the nine-man Region 3, just as they all were the week before.

T-G-U currently holds a tiebreaker over both W-N-G and St. John. Each of the four nine-man regions will see their top two teams host an opening-round state playoff game.

If the Region 3 standings stay as they are through the end of this week, T-G-U and W-N-G will host playoff games. This would be the first time the Sioux have hosted a playoff game since it defeated Milnor-North Sargent 20-14 on Oct. 27, 2012.

On Friday, W-N-G took control very early and never let go. Running back Chase Conway scored from nine yards out 43 seconds into the game before scoring twice more later in the first quarter to help W-N-G jump out to a 22-0 lead.

“All week in practice, we knew we were going to need a fast start,” Conway said. “Preparing for some of our bigger games coming up, we know that we’re going to have to play four quarters of football, and it starts out with getting the momentum on our side early and keeping the hammer down.”

The hammer stayed down the rest of the night. Scores from Conway and backup tailback Brennon Lovell in the second quarter bookended a 34-yard interception return from Kitzman for a touchdown with 6:45 left in the first half.

W-N-G rested many of its starters throughout the second half ahead of this Saturday’s regular-season finale at Parshall-White Shield.

Sioux defensive end Tanner Rauschenberger capped off the scoring early in the second half with a 46-yard fumble recovery for a score.

“We got a lot of kids in, and that’s good,” W-N-G head coach Tom Nesvold said after the victory over D-A. “A lot of kids played well, and quite a few that don’t normally get in got in and took a lot of steps forward, and the whole team did.

“The young kids are improving, the older kids came out and took care of business right away, and we went from there.”

The Sioux’s game in Parshall on Saturday is scheduled to start at 3 p.m.