Hoping to replicate last season’s success against conference foe Pinedale Friday, the Kemmerer High School football team instead found a much-improved Wranglers team looking to keep their playoff hopes alive, falling on the road 36-6.

The loss dropped the Rangers to 1-5 (0-4 in the 2A West), with two games remaining in the regular season.

“We just didn’t execute to the level that we needed to,” said KHS head coach Bart Jernigan. “Pinedale’s an improving program — take nothing away from them. The thing right now that we really need to work on is a lot of the same mistakes. Penalties, turnovers — a lot of the same details. It’s not necessarily the same players making the same mistakes over and over again — it’s moments where we have those little lapses in execution, and we can’t afford that. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves in a position to avoid those things, then bounce back from them when they do happen.”

Pinedale opened the scoring  with a field goal, then returned a fumble for a touchdown to make it 10-0 after a quarter of play. The 

Wranglers added 13 points in the second quarter — including a 6-yard touchdown run by Cale Dauwen — to take a 23-0 lead at the half.

“We gave up a defensive touchdown early in the game, and that definitely swung some momentum in their favor,” Jernigan explained. “Execution, in terms of our schemes — making sure we know where we’re going, and that we’re in the right places. We’ve had a couple of moving parts with a couple of injuries, and that happens — that’s just a reality of high school football. You have to find a way to overcome that. You move kids around in different positions, and sometimes it gets a little dicey, in terms of what everybody knows. And we need to do a better job of tackling in the open field — we’re missing quite a few open-field tackles, as well as just letting kids get into the open field far too often, as well.”

The Rangers’ defense stepped up their efforts in the second half, holding Pinedale to just six points in the third quarter — a 1-yard plunge by quarterback Ian Rigo — and seven points in the fourth, a 33-yard scamper for a touchdown by Sergio Duarte Villa.

The Rangers avoided the shutout on a 31-yard touchdown strike from quarterback Tanner Schramm to Bryson McGill, making the final score 36-6.

“The effort’s been good — the kids are trying to compete,” Jernigan said. “All in all, that’s the basis for success on the field. We need to take that up a level, to where not only is the effort consistent, but the execution is at a higher level, as well.”

The Rangers finished with 247 yards of total offense: 201 yard on the ground and 46 yards through the air. Quarterback Schramm was the leading rusher, with 85 yards on 16 carries, followed by Cole Rogers, with 31 yards on 14 carries. Gabe Emery, McGill and Kyle Fox finished with 24, 23 and 16 yards, respectively.

Under center, Schramm completed 5 of 7 passes for 46 yards and a touchdown; McGill hauled in three of those passes for 31 yards and a score. Rogers had one catch for 15 yards, while Fox had one catch for no yards.

“I thought we did some good things moving the ball — we were able to move our quarterback [Tanner Schramm] pretty well,” Jernigan said. “We moved the ball decently through him, though we weren’t able to do as much of it as we would have liked, obviously.”

Defensively, the Rangers allowed 308 yards rushing, though they held Pinedale to just 84 yards passing. Linebacker Colter Krell had a busy night, finishing with 16.5 points (3 solo tackles, half a tackle for loss, two fumbles recovered); Rogers was the only other Ranger in double digits with 11 points (6 tackles, 5 solo). Emery finished with nine points (5 tackles, 2 solo, 1 pass defended), Bridger Anderson tallied eight points (4 solo tackles) and Schramm collected seven (4 tackles, 3 solo).

“For the most part, the kids have done some good things — it’s just a matter of now we, as a coaching staff, getting them prepped with that expectation of performing at a varsity level Monday through Thursday, so that we’re ready Friday night,” Jernigan said. “The big leap for us this year is structuring practice in a manner that forces us to execute at a Friday night level, so that we can go into Friday already having played there all week.”

With just two games left in the season — one on the road at Lovell Friday, and at home against Mountain View the following week — the level of competition will continue to get better. That said, Jernigan believes his team will finish out the season with grit and determination.

“We finish the season with Lovell and Mountain View — the two top teams in 2A — so it doesn’t get any easier for us,” Jernigan said. “But I think it will be a really good opportunity for us to show who we are, and what we’re made of, and I’m hopeful our kids will go out and compete like that.”

The Bulldogs are coming off of a 36-28 loss to No. 1 Mountain View Friday, so they’ll be ready to play, according to Jernigan.

“Lovell is a good, physical team,” Jernigan said. “They lost to Mountain View on Friday by 10 points, I think, so they’re a quality team. We need to be ready for their physicality, and they pass the ball a lot better than probably anybody else at the 2A level right now. They’ll sling it around, so you have to be ready in coverage. We’re gonna have to do a good job of getting to the quarterback, but they’re also plenty capable of coming in tight, shifting into a Power I and running straight at you. We need to be as dynamic defensively as we have all season.”

As for the Rangers’ offense, it will come down to ball security and the blocking of the big guys up front.

“Defensively. Lovell is going to come out and be stout,” Jernigan said. “They have big, physical kids up front, so we have to find ways to manufacture yards. The longer we can hold on to the ball, the better things will be. If we can keep the ball out of their hands — and really bleed the clock — that will give us a good opportunity to get out and execute the kind of game plan we’d like to have against them. I’m excited for it, and I think our kids are, as well. Their attitude — despite the loss to Pinedale on Friday — is that there are plenty of things we can play for, to help us go forward.”