The Kemmerer High School football team ran into a buzzsaw of sorts Friday night in the form of No. 2-ranked Mountain View, falling prey to the Buffalos’ high-powered offense in a 61-6 loss.
That said, there were positives to be had in defeat, including inspired play on both sides of the ball, and physical play from the young Rangers (1-3, 0-3 in 2A West), who refused to be intimidated on their home field.
“Overall, I was pleased with the effort and hustle from our boys,” said KHS head coach Bart Jernigan. “They have a little more depth, size and varsity experience than we have, so it’s not shocking that through the course of 48 minutes that started to wear on us. I felt like our boys made adjustments to some of the things they were doing and put some different pressure on Mountain View than was probably expected. A few late scores from them definitely made the loss look very lopsided. I am hopeful it can be a building block for us going forward. While we will see some good teams in the coming weeks, I don’t think we will face anybody as big, talented, and experienced as Mountain View. If we can build on the good we saw Friday night, there are good things yet to come for us.”
Mountain View’s All-Everything quarterback Justus Platts had his typical game — especially in the first half — but the Rangers’ defense did a commendable job of putting pressure on Platts, and forcing him out of the pocket.
“The defense hung tough,” Jernigan said. “Mountain View’s offense is a buzzsaw. Our boys did a lot to force some uncharacteristic mistakes from them. We knew that we couldn’t just sit in base against their talent, so we tried to mix up looks and pressures a lot this week. The speed and arm talent of the MV offense is unlike anything we’ve seen this year, so it was definitely a test. At the end of the day, their size and skill wore us down over the course of the game. Overall, I was proud of the fight in our kids, and I think that if we can continue to build on that, we can do some special things going forward.”
Offensively, the Rangers were able to move the ball with some consistency, and scored their only points of the contest during a sustained drive towards the end of the first quarter, culminating in a 12-yard touchdown pass from Sam Thatcher to Noah Parks.
“With the physicality that MV presents defensively, they forced us to do some things that, for us, are not conventional,” Jernigan said. “While we repped most of the adjustments a little bit in practice, I was immensely proud of our offense’s ability to adjust to what was available given our limited reps of it. We were able to use some of their aggression against them with the screen game and found some ways to get our speed into space to make some things happen.”
“The touchdown play was a classical screen setup that we used earlier in the drive,” Jernigan added. “But overall, we have to be better in the red zone, as we got down there three times and only ended up with one score.”
Thatcher had a solid game under center, completing 12 of 27 passes for 116 yards and a touchdown. Parks was his primary target on the night, hauling in seven passes for 96 yards and a score; Marcus Reachel followers, with four catches for 15 yards. Dawson Crosland caught one pass for five yards.
Parks also led the charge on the ground, carrying the ball 15 times for 68 yards. Thatcher rushed 12 times for 40 yards.
The Rangers will now prepare for Friday’s Homecoming game, welcoming Lyman to Rangers Stadium. The Eagles (0-5, 0-3 in 2A West) have yet to win a game this season, but don’t let the record fool you, Jernigan said.
“Worrying about their record would be foolish,” he said. “You watch the film, and you see a team that could easily be 4-1. Coach Anderson always is creative in his gameplanning, so we have to be ready for — and anticipate things — we haven’t seen from them yet. We also need to have solutions for the run game that is Lyman’s trademark style. Past that, we need to be better at getting horizontal movement in the run game. If we can be smart about it, we will be able to find some matchups that will give us a shot at getting back in the win column.”
