The Anton Bulldogs kicked off their first game of the season earlier than most in the area Thursday evening, falling to the Booker Kiowas 38-12, at home.
The game started off with a suffocating defense from the Bulldogs as they recovered a fumble in the first quarter of the game due to a bad snap that the Booker offense had allowed. From there on the Bulldogs were on the board with the first score of the season coming from junior Jose Avalos on a nice catch where he dove in the endzone.
The second quarter was the same except the Booker offense found its feet and put together productive drives to take the lead on the Anton defense who would answer back with another pass to Jose Avalos allowing him to score his second touchdown of the game.
Both teams’ defenses stood their ground going into halftime with the score being in favor of Booker 16-12, due to Anton not being able to make their field goals after they scored.
Anton Bulldog Head Football Coach Brian Duncan was able to talk to his team going into halftime and give them a break that some of the players needed since some did not come off the field due to them being some of the best players on the field. Coach Duncan said, “The best players are going to play, they’re going to get used to the conditioning. It’s just different from what we show them in practice so it’s just something they have to get used to and get mentally prepared for.”
In the end the Bulldogs fell short. The offense put productive drives together driving down the field with ease with their electric passing game and their hard nose run game, they just had a hard time finishing the drive off with a touchdown as they were stopped many times in the red zone.
“We have to find guys that want to stay on their blocks, my philosophy is fast paced so we’re going to get to the line and we’re going to gash it,” explained Coach Duncan. “We’re going to get back to the line and try to do it again constantly, but we need guys to stay on their blocks so we can finish it off to get into the endzone. I told my guys we must refuse to get tackled in this sport. If we can make one man miss, we can make them all miss, but overall, we had positive drives we must find a way to finish it off with a score.”
The coaches on both sides of the ball were doing their jobs very well calling blitz’s when they got the look they were waiting for and the offense when they were well rested was finding their way right through the defense similar to the first quarter. The offense was focused more on getting the passing game started and airing the ball out to get their entire offense involved including their quarterbacks to get their confidence in their arms.
“If we can capitalize on the ability to pass and catch, we’re going to be dominant this year, we have to get guys to block and stay on them to give our guys some time,” said Coach Duncan. “Conditioning wise it’s a little harder to preach it when our entire team is 15 players and most of them are playing both sides of the ball. I always say there’s practice players and then there’s game day players, so we have to know that there is no quit, we have to grind and we have to get our conditioning up since tonight there was cramp after cramp and that was due to us just not taking care of ourselves like we need to, but we’ll get there.”
The Anton Bulldogs move to 0-1 on their record this year and play next week against White Deer as the away team at 7 p.m. The Bulldogs have a tough battle against their conditioning and health.