Fatigue versus Farson

The Saratoga football team played Farson-Eden, the number one ranked six man team, on Friday. Panthers coach Logan Wright was extremely pleased with how his players performed though he acknowledged the score didn’t indicate the intensity of the game.

“If you look at the final score, it doesn’t depict how the game went in my eyes,” Wright said. “We didn’t beat Farson but we sure scared them for two-and-a-half quarters.”

The Panthers defense kept the Pronghorns scoreless the first quarter while Saratoga scored two points. The second quarter, Farson did score, but deep into the quarter, the Panthers were ahead 12-8.

“Offensively you will see Sam (Schneider) and Teegan (Love) performed well for us and defensively Noah Rimmer led us in tackles and helped us a lot,” Wright said. “Alex Irby played pretty much the full game and he along with Geoffrey Johnson who is also a freshman, took hits from seniors on the Farson team and would pop back up and were the epitome of what this program needs in players.”

He said if you looked at Saratoga’s top six players and Farson’s top six players, the Panthers hung right there with the higher ranked team.

Wright acknowledged fatigue started to set in late in the second quarter, so Farson capitalized on it and got ahead by the half 24-40.

“Still we kept fighting back with scores until Sam got hurt,” Wright said. “Then the score did get farther apart making it look like it was more one sided than it actually was.”

He said although the team was down, the players never gave up, which culminated into the Panthers scoring a touchdown with only four seconds left leaving the score at 36-78.

“Although the goal is to win obviously, there were a lot of good things to take away from this game,” Wright said. “When we are talking ‘pave the way’, this is the group we need because they are tough kids and they have a lot of talent.”

Wright was also happy when the team was in the huddle, players took responsibility for when something went wrong instead of blaming each other.

“They don’t blame each other and I am so thankful they work together as a team,” Wright said. “I started off this season wanting to emphasize respect for each other and they have taken to this better than I could have hoped; it is almost like it is in their DNA.”

Wright is expecting good things to happen on their games coming up this week.

“We are looking to fix a few small things in offense and defense, but I am overall happy with the team,” Wright said. “It is still so early in the season.”

He said after playing the number one team, Wright knows the group he has in place is going to be the team that paves the way to Saratoga’s success to come.

“I think the scoreboard will start reflecting this in the near future,” Wright concluded.

The next scheduled game is Sept. 11 at 5 p.m. at Saratoga.