The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

The Big Sandy Pioneers, still plagued with the loss of starters due to injuries and illness, came up with a solid 32-12 win over Sunburst Refiners.

In the first quarter, the Refiners scored the first touchdown for six and no conversion. The Pioneers followed with an 11-yard run by Kody Strutz into the end zone, putting six on the board. No conversion. Going into the second quarter, the Refiners scored again with no conversion. The Refiners lined up for the punt, and there was a safety on the play giving the Pioneers two points. Pioneers scored again with a 3-yard run by Strutz into the end zone. The second quarter ended with a pass from Braydon Cline to Cooper Taylor for a 53-yard touchdown, with Big Sandy leading 20-12.

In the third quarter, the Pioneer defense kept the Refiners at 12 while Cline completed a 7-yard run into the end zone with no conversion bringing the score to 26-12. In the fourth quarter, Cline passed to Lance Rutledge, who completed a 28-yard touchdown. Lane Demontiney took it into the endzone for a 2-point conversion sealing the Pioneer’s win at 32-12.

While the Pioneers won soundly, according to Assistant Coach Tucker Taylor, they are capable of much more. “Early on, our offense struggled, but in the second quarter, we got a little bit of something going on the offensive side, and our defense started playing better, which has been the case. It seems that our defense is more game-ready when we start than the offense is. In the second half, we came out and kept them from scoring, and we scored two more touchdowns. We came out the winner so that is good.”

“Lane Demontiney had two interceptions in the second half, which was great, and he played a real good game, and Cooper Taylor gave a gutsy performance given he’s been playing with a nagging injury in his lower back. Rusty Gasvoda played well, and Sam Cox also stepped up and played pretty well when we needed him. “

According to Taylor, the Pioneer’s offense seems to come out weak in the first quarter, then give a good team effort in the second half. Taylor feels this is because “They are still trying to find a rhythm on the offense, and it takes us a while in the game to figure it out. A lot of it is we have a group of guys who are still learning that they are the varsity guys now and can’t have mistakes, and in Varsity football if you have mistakes, the team is a lot of the time that makes fewer mistakes is the winner. Fortunately, this time we made fewer mistakes, but it was still ugly at times.”

“It’s something to improve on. Every team we’ve played has had seniors on their team, and we don’t have any seniors, so the experience is something we are gaining now in the first part of the season.”

In addition to being a young team, the Pioneers have struggled with losing key players due to injuries and illness. Said Taylor, “ Right now, it’s just our health. It’s been one of those unlucky years. Most years, we’ve stayed healthy, but we’ve had guys that are sick or bunged up this year. It’s been tough getting into sync because we’ve been missing somebody every practice with an injury or being sick or whatever it is, so it is tough when we have injuries, and new guys have to step up. We haven’t been healthy since the first game of the season. Now it is just getting our health back and getting into the rhythm and getting experience is big. It’s a building year with no Seniors, but they are a young group of guys with a lot of talent. So far this year, we’ve seen a lot of that talent show, but Injuries have kept us from maybe improving as vastly as we hoped. Hopefully, we are getting this adversity out of the way early, and it will help us later in the season.”

As far as this season’s game schedule, Taylor feels that “right now the schedule works out good for us because we played some tough games, but we are still going to need to be ready to roll, but I think we are going to be able to get ready and get healthy. Then, down the stretch, we will have a Valier game at home and then a short week and play Power-Dutton-Brady on a Wednesday. Taylor is confident that “if we can get healthy and get into the rhythm, we should go into that last game with a conference championship up for grabs between Power-Dutton-Brady and us. We are definitely a good team, and on that on the right night, and if we are all in sync, I think we could beat anybody.”

This week I also had the opportunity to interview team captain Braydon Cline. When asked what he saw as the team’s strengthens and weaknesses, he gave the following observations. “We are not playing as good on offense because we don’t have our full team due to injuries, and on our defense, we don’t have the ones we had at the beginning of the year.”

Asked if he had any solutions to the problem, Cline stated, “We have to practice harder and pay more attention to what is going on and come out of the game better at the beginning. It’s definitely more helpful to have all starters, but we can play without them.”

As for their strengths, Cline felt their “defense is playing well especially without two starters, and our offense passing has improved each game.” I quizzed Cline on his role as the quarterback, and he said he doesn’t usually run the ball that much but ran a lot more than usual this game, and he tends to hand the ball off more than passing it but has been passing more the last few games. When asked why, he stated that he was more confident because “we are starting to the throw the ball a lot more in practice and running the pass plays more in the game, so I am getting a better feel for it” I asked which he liked best, running the ball, handing it off or passing it. His response was “passing.” Why? “I like it because you have a better opportunity for a big play.”

When asked what he thought created that second-half shift, Cline felt, “We got a whole bunch of defensive stops, and it helped motivate us on the offense, and we scored because our defense was working hard and trying to get us to turn the score around and get on top. The defense helped the offense to do better.”

Coaches and players seem to agree that the Pioneers had developed a habit of starting slow in their first quarter. I asked Cline what he thought could be done to help shift the alow start. He said that he and the other captains had been talking about how hard it was to “get everyone clicking at the same time,” so they’ve been thinking of coming up with some kind of chant at the beginning of the game to get everyone “fired up, so they are hyped up for the game and come out strong.” He also said they need to find a way to keep talking it up out on the field, talking to each other, and keeping each other motivated. He felt “as captains; we need to take a step up in being louder and talkative and getting our team going.”

Having now interviewed three of the team captions, this reporter has been impressed with their desire. These captains come up with ideas to help get their team motivated from the

get-go. So based on this interview, I will be carefully listening for the chants and the field team chatter.