Wildcats play first game in new conference

First things first. I have misspelled Lucas Parris’s name twice already in four articles. To his mother, I am very very sorry. Now that the mea culpa is out of the way, onto this week.

Last Friday night the Logan Rogersville Wildcats played their first ever football game in the new Ozark Mountain Conference against the Bulldogs from Carl Junction. Being the smallest school in the conference, Wildcats fans have been expecting it to be a challenge entering this new conference. Couple that with a very young squad on the field, and Carl Junction gave them that challenge on Friday night. The final score was 38-13 in favor of the Bulldogs.

Honestly, the defense couldn’t slow down the Bulldogs all night. They could rip off a 6 yard run at will. When they softened up the defense with the run they started to throw concise intermediate passing routes with precision. On one touchdown, the coverage totally busted for a wide open deep pass down the middle. Jacob Shinkeravich was aggressive and came to play from the middle linebacker spot, but objectively the rest of the boys just were not as aggressive and were either a step slow or tried to arm tackle bigger backs with little success. It really stood out watching the film back that Shink was tackling very hard, but it was usually after a significant gain. Hopefully he can get some of that ultra aggression to rub off on the other young men. Fisher Dedmon came up with a fumble recovery on a punt, but that was the highlight of the night for the defense.

The offense continued to rotate quarterbacks possession by possession. Neither QB was able to establish a rhythm. Sam Frieze led a nice scoring drive in the first quarter that was capped off with a touchdown run by sophomore Carl Westerling. That score was set up by a nice passing play from junior Sam Frieze to sophomore Lucas White. Freshman Kaz Manczuk passed for a touchdown to senior AJ Muncy on a looping pass down the sideline with a long run after the catch. The game was a bit of a back and forth affair until late in the first half when Carl Junction forced a strip fumble and short return for a touchdown. At halftime the score was 24-13. The Wildcats never mounted a challenge in the second half. Self inflicted wounds, like a fumbled quarterback-center exchange, an undisciplined penalty for saying the wrong words towards or in the vicinity of a referee, and some errant passes just made the situation more difficult. The best news of the night was that major injuries did not occur. It looked dire at one point with Gage Hale on the ground for an extended time with an ankle injury, but he returned a couple of series later.

Since it was a home game, the award winning Wildcat Marching Band performed again at halftime. They sounded much improved from the home opener and are starting to round into shape with the contest season starting on Saturday. They went to Carl Junction on Saturday and took 1st in class, caption awards with best drum line and best color guard in prelims, and 2nd overall among all classes in finals. Three of the boys on the football team compete with that marching band every Saturday and one of them even has a solo. However since Parker White is a starter on the O-line he isn’t able to play his solo at halftime on Fridays for the home crowd. They will be in Ozark at a festival this weekend.

The Wildcats travel to West Plains this Friday. It is a place where the Wildcats have historically had a hard time competing. We will see how this young group holds up on their first conference road game. If you are not able to travel to the game, then watch on Facebook on Chain Gang Sports as they live stream every varsity game. They are running the ball better, and multiple underclassmen are getting valuable varsity experience that hopefully will pay dividends down the road. For the sake of the 7 seniors, hopefully that experience pays off quickly in the later part of this season.