Panthers take Rams by the horns

Saratoga football head coach Logan Wright may not like his team is listed as Saratoga JV on Wyopreps.com and the games are listed only as exhibitions, but the team is playing like a varsity contender and just racked up another impressive win against the Dubois Rams 68-6 when they played at 2 p.m. on Saturday in Dubois.

“Everything worked for us,” Wright said. “Sam (Schnieder) went for five touchdowns and didn’t get tackled and you have to give credit to Kelton Koehn for his blocking, because nobody touched Sam.”

Wright said the player who had the best game was freshman Alex Irby.

“He led us in tackles and he scored on defense,” Wright said. “He forced a fumble, recovered it and scored on it.”

The Panthers other freshman, Geoffrey Johnson also did well as he had to step up to fill the void left by Teegan Love who is out for the season.

Love had his finger broken and had surgery on Friday. The surgeons put in three pins and was told that he had to be careful for the next month. There are only two games left for the Panthers.

Wright was amazed when Johnson threw a 40 yard pass into the wind to Schneider that he took for another 25 yards for a touchdown.

The Panther coach likes the way his team treats the opponents on the field.

“They are just classy the way they are helping the other player on the opposing team up,” Wright said. “I just felt like they handled themselves so well and their character showed.”

He said when the Panthers played Riverside last week, there was a little bit of letdown in the third quarter when Saratoga was up. This was not the case in this game. Wright said the Panther team kept playing excellent football.

He said Dubois played tough, but the Panthers would stop the Rams almost every drive.

“The Rams would march down the field and make some good drives on third and fourth down, but then we would force the fumble or get an interception,” Wright said. “We moved Noah (Rimmer) to middle line backer instead of defensive end and it worked because he was involved in 22 tackles.”

He said Trenton Carr was involved in 20 tackles to also stop drives by the Rams.

“Kelton, our big guy, rushes once and gets a 65 yard touchdown,” Wright said. “I couldn’t ask for my players to do better.”

Wright was down to seven players due to Love’s injury and because due to personal reasons Menphis Smith had to miss the game.

Wright is excited to face their next opponent Guernsey-Sunrise.

“I have been looking forward to this game for a while,” Wright said. “I think it is going to be a fun game because they are pretty physical. I think it is a game where we can really see where we are.”

The Guernsey-Sunrise game is at 7 p.m on Sept. 28.