Football Senior Night

Football Senior Night

Cody Goggin

12-3-2013  1:19 pm

OWENSVILLE, MO-Senior Night is an important moment in the lives of many high school athletes. These athletes have worked their whole lives and Senior Night is a culmination of all of their hard work. Although it is a happy night, it is also a sad night because it is their last game on their home field. For the Dutchmen football seniors, their last game would be against the St. Clair Bulldogs.

            The game started off with a huge surprise. Owensville opened up the game with an onside kick and recovered to take possession of the ball first! They would proceed to punt and down St. Clair within the 10 yard line. St. Clair then ran over 90 yards for the first touchdown of the game. Owensville then answered with a rushing touchdown by senior Ben Angell to tie it at 7. St. Clair’s Skylar Hutchinson scored his second rushing touchdown of the game, but missed the extra point. The Dutchmen once again scored except they made their extra point to take a 14-13 lead.

            Two more touchdowns would occur and St. Clair made a two-point conversion to push the score back even. Things slowed down for the Dutchmen from this point though as they failed to score another touchdown and allowed to more, losing by a final score of 34-21. This was a hard fought game for the Dutchmen and although it did not result in a win, it was a good way to end the season for Owensville and the careers of some of the Dutchmen.

            When asked about the game, senior Nick Plocinski stated that, “It was a good game. It was nerve racking. It was fun, but you wanted to do your best because it was our last home game.” Logan Shoemaker concurred with Nick by describing his senior season in one word: “fun.”

            Senior lineman Ryan Escalante said that, “The memory I am going to take away from this year is going to be winning the first game in two seasons against Pacific and the whole team working together for it.”

            Coach Dale Long was asked how it would feel to know that these seniors will not be returning next year to play football for him and his reply was, “The seniors will be missed. This years group decided that change needed to happen and they made that change. They decided to lead and always make sure that everyone was supposed to do their jobs. This year’s seniors are a great group and they will all be very successful in their lives.”

            It is true that we will miss a lot of the seniors. They were the leaders on the team and also some of the best players. Owensville does play one last game against Soldan as a district game and if they win then they will advance. This team, although they did not supply many wins, they did supply one memory that will last for years to come by winning against Pacific.