Published: September 07, 2008 12:44 am         

Beer era begins with thrilling victory

First-year Pawnee High coach Todd Beer began his Black Bear career with a close-call victory he called a “dogfight.”

Pawnee beat Pawhuska, 14-13, Friday night on the Huskies’ turf.

The Black Bears scored both touchdowns in the first quarter. Sophomore Tate Beer threw a 35-yard pass to senior Sonny Moore, but Pawnee missed the extra-point kick.

Junior Nelson Duncan intercepted a pass for a 46-yard return touchdown, and Tate Beer ran the ball to score the two-point conversion.

In the second quarter, Pawhuska attempted a comeback when quarterback Kyle Culver ran 40 yards, scoring a touchdown, and Culver connected on the extra point. Finally, with 1:23 left in the game, quarterback Cameron Kirk threw a 45-yard touchdown pass to Tino Hall.

In the final minute of the game, junior Devyn Echohawk blocked the Huskies’ extra-point kick to seal the win for Pawnee.

“Both teams stood hard and fought well,” Coach Beer said.

Tate Beer threw 2-for-4 for 51 yards and rushed for 22 yards. Sophomore Cameron Heisler rushed 27 times for 80 yards and caught one pass for 16 yards.

Next weekend, the Black Bears will go on the road to face Hominy. Last season, Pawnee won 44-16 at Hominy.



Tough start for Tigers

Cushing’s inexperience led to an opening-night loss.

Cushing fell, 45-13, to Bristow Friday. Coach Lance Hoggatt credited part of Bristow’s success to the Tigers’ youth.

“Going into it, with as many sophomores as we start, we were concerned obviously,” he said. “When you play so many young kids, you run the risk of people taking advantage of that fact.”

He added that it wasn’t all underclassmen errors.

“Our kids are going to our places and doing what we ask of them,” Hoggatt said. “Bristow just played us to death. I think they only had one score where they actually drove the football. The rest were just home runs, just big, big plays.”

He said the Tigers just couldn’t recover from the big plays they gave up. Because of the big plays and long yardages Bristow made, some of Cushing’s numbers look better than Bristow’s.

Cushing had only three penalties for 15 yards; Bristow had nine for 65 yards.

Cushing had 12 first downs to Bristow’s nine, and the Tigers possessed the ball three minutes longer than their rivals did.

Hoggatt added that Bristow has some speed on the field that the Tigers couldn’t match this year.

“When you’re young and learning and trying to do what we’re doing with our program, you can’t make those kind of mistakes against quality opponents, but unfortunately we did,” he said.

     

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