Red Devils pick up wins, prepare for Hot Springs

It isn't often that a football team can pick up two conference victories in a four-day span, but that's exactly what The Noxon Red Devils were able to do last week. September 28, Coach Bart Haflich's team traveled to Philipsburg to meet Gardiner High School for a makeup game. The Red Devils' defense showed some early signs of rust as they lost containment on Gardiner senior John McDonald who got around the edge for an early 55-yard touchdown run. Noxon was able to respond with a 37-yard touchdown run of their own by senior fullback Cade VanVleet. It was more of the same for the Noxon defense, however, as Gardiner drove down the field and punched in a four-yard rushing touchdown courtesy of McDonald once again.

Down 12-8 in the early stages, Haflich recognized that his team looked a bit out of sync. "We looked like we hadn't played in two and a half weeks. Lots of missed assignments, mental errors, we gave up a couple big plays over the edge." Haflich went on to say that his defense failed to practice "assignment purity" which is a term he and his staff like to use to refer to a player maintaining his assigned responsibility on a given play.

Gardiner's lead was short-lived as Noxon was able to buckle down and shut down the Bruins' offensive attack. As the Gardiner offense ground to a halt, the Noxon attack was just getting started. After being down 12-8 in the first, Noxon kicked things into gear to the tune of five unanswered touchdowns to take a commanding 44-12 midway through the fourth quarter. The run featured three rushing touchdowns from VanVleet, a 68-yard scoring scamper from senior Trevan Monegan, and a particularly satisfying 63-yard screen pass from quarterback Derreck Christensen to tight end Nathan Cano. Coach Haflich mentioned that the Red Devils had been working on that particular screen play for a while now. "We've been trying to connect on that play all season," he noted. "We've had some overthrows, miscommunications, it was great to see Nathan pop it finally."

McDonald was able to punch in another rushing touchdown against the Noxon reserves to bring the final score to 44-20.

Friday night, Noxon hosted West Yellowstone in what was Noxon's homecoming game. The festivities were short-lived unfortunately as West Yellowstone forfeited the game after one of their players was injured with 3:17 left in the first quarter. At the time of the forfeit, Noxon held an 8-0 lead courtesy of a VanVleet 17-yard rushing touchdown and an extra point kick from Christensen.

Even though they came away with a victory, Haflich was disappointed that the game couldn't be completed. "It was a bummer that we couldn't play the game out on homecoming in front of our fans."

Nonetheless, Friday will go down as a victory for a Noxon team that is currently in an excellent position to make the playoffs at 3-2 overall and 2-0 in conference play. They'll look to make it four in a row as they welcome in a Hot Springs team that is coming off of an impressive win against Gardiner last Friday. The game against Hot Springs, originally scheduled for Friday, has been tentatively rescheduled for Tuesday, October 12.