Sports
Braves go 2-0 in intercounty face-offs with 21-8 win over Sioux
Tyler Ohmann
08/28/2012
For the second straight year the Bottineau Braves became the top team in Bottineau County as they defeated the Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn Sioux 21-8 last Tuesday in the opening game of the season.
Senior Trevor Wettlaufer ran for 142 yards and a touchdown for the Braves.
“It feels pretty good, we didn’t want them to get one on us,” said senior Wyatt Johnson, one of the lineman that opened holes for Wettlaufer. “This is probably the last time we play them, so it felt good to be 2-0 on them.”
Bottineau scored first as Andrew Hill scored on a 20-yard pass play from quarterback Tanner Bickford. The drive was set up by several Wettlaufer runs.
“They concentrated on Harrison (Aide), put a lot of bodies on him, so we had to maintain with the run,” Bedlion said. “We threw to the backside a couple times, but our strength helped us with the run game.”
The success in the run game came from the guys on the line, which Johnson said will be a strength this season.
“We have a good, experienced line, and all of them have really been working hard, it’s been helping us out a lot,” Johnson said. “We were just driving it up the middle, and it really worked good tonight.”
Sioux coach Tom Nesvold said that was where the Sioux were lacking.
“We got outplayed on the line,” Nesvold said. “We have to come and strap it on, and come ready to play.”
Wettlaufer scored the Braves second touchdown shortly before the half on a 20-yard scamper. He broke several would-be tackles in route to the endzone.
“You can preach all you want in practice, when you have four or five kids sitting in practice and two or three coaches and you’re trying to get intensity, game speed, live, thud action, it doesn’t happen when you look across and the whole defensive line is 13-year-olds,” Nesvold said. “It’s not an excuse, but it doesn’t help until you get out here, and we’re going to have to grow up as the season goes.”
Both teams combined for several penalties in the game, including several false starts, which Bedlion chalked up to being early in the season.
“I bet you both teams can say that definitely looked like game one,” Bedlion said. “You only have two weeks to prepare, and we definitely shot ourselves in the foot a few times.”
“We kept battling and the guys up front worked real hard, and did a good job running the ball,” Bedlion added.
Bottineau’s third score came in the fourth quarter as Harrison Aide returned a punt 35 yards for the score.
The Sioux’s lone score came on the ensuing kick off when junior Hunter Braaten returned the Braves kick off 88 yards for the score. He then tossed a two-point conversion pass to Kodie Hancock to bring the game to its final score of 21-8.
“I thought the defense played very well, pretty disciplined,” Bedlion said. “They didn’t get loose on us on any reverse plays or anything like that, and we tackled decent, except for that kick return, we missed about six tackles there.”
However, Bottineau was happy to come away with the win.
“It is good to start off with a win, the kids wanted that,” Bedlion said. “It is really important to play well at home, and start off the way we did.”
“It’s definitely good getting a ‘W,’ but we have a lot of work yet to do,” Bedlion added.
Johnson also was pleased with the victory, and all the hard work it took to get to his senior season.
“It felt good to kick the season off right,” Johnson said. “We should have had a couple more points on the board, but I think that was a good start.”
“It feels really good, it feels like four years of work has been leading up to it,” Johnson continued. “It’s been a fun ride, hopefully we can keep getting wins on the board.”
Nesvold said his team needs to find something extra if they want to compete this season.
“We did some things right, but we had way too many mental mistakes,” Nesvold said. “Not running the right routes, not running the right patterns, all of a sudden not running hard, things that can be corrected and a lot of it’s mental.”
“Right now it is a ‘want to’ and we have to find that ‘want to,’” Nesvold added. “If we do we have a lot of talent on this team, they can do a lot, we just need to dig deep and find the ‘want to.’”
Bottineau may well remain the kings of the county, which is something they feel pretty good about.
“It is nice to go 2-0 on those guys, they’re well-coached and a good group,” Bedlion said. “And yeah, they’ll probably go back to nine-man, so we probably won’t see them again.”