Bobcats to begin conference play

Bobcat Football will have their first game of the 2A conference when they head to Wheatland this Friday, after a 12-0 loss against Lander Sept. 15.

Of the Lander game, Coach Matt McPhie said the Bobcats seemed to struggle everywhere. Watching film from the game, he said, there’s a lot of areas the boys could do better. They didn’t handle the ball well, for instance, and put on the ground a lot.

While weather was a factor, McPhie said it was something both teams had to deal with and Lander came into the game much better prepared. He further added Lander is a much more physical team.

The staff has asked the boys to look at their physicality and get more physical on the field.

As a whole, the defensive line did well, McPhie said. Noah Schwalbe had several tackles and Tyson Tobar also played well on offense and defense.

Thermopolis had 50 total offensive plays for 129 yards, and made five of nine pass attempts, with an average 12.2 yards per pass. They had 68 rushing yards on 41 attempts and 61 yards on receiving.

The team has made some big steps in becoming a better team than they were a year ago, McPhie said, noting he’s looking forward to getting into the 2A conference with the upcoming game at Wheatland. Their opponents are a good physical team, McPhie said, so the boys need a great week of practice and they will be challenged.

The game at Wheatland is scheduled to start at 6 p.m.

The middle school Bobcats had a 40-0 win on Saturday over Rocky Mountain.

Coach Shane Corpening said, “Once again the boys put together a solid football game. Our defense, in particular, played outstanding.” The boys held Rocky Mountain to 0 first downs and negative total yards.

“As a coaching staff we were pretty impressed with that, but there are still plenty of things we need to work on and improve at defensively. We had some really great efforts on defense from Adley Coyne, Jase Longwell, Austin Barral, and Hazen Thurgood. Jase and Adley play a defensive end/outside linebacker hybrid and they did a phenomenal job keeping contained and not giving up anything on the edge.

“Hazen and Austin were pretty much double and triple teamed all game and still didn’t allow Rocky Mountain to get very much between the tackles. A key emphasis on defense this week will be our pass defense; making sure that we are getting to our pass drops and communicating as a team.”

Offensively, Corpening continues to see improvement from game to game, “but we still have quite a bit to clean up. Roedy Ferrell put together a nice football game as our running back. He scored a pair of touchdowns and is really getting better at reading his blocks. Jase Longwell played solid as well. He caught a touch down pass and ran for two more. Offensively our focus is going to be on tightening up our blocking schemes. Our offensive line had a solid practice on Monday and we are really looking to build off of that.”

Corpening expects the upcoming game against Worland to be a good test for the team. “I know our boys are excited for this one and it should be a great football game.” The game is scheduled for Sept. 21 at 4:30 p.m.