Youthful Wildcats struggled to read opponents, continued competing

The Banner County football traveled to Cody for their season opener, an away against the Cowboys. Though the Wildcats put up a good fight, they came home with a devastating 80-19 loss.

“The challenges that we faced is being able to simulate what the other team is going to do against us,” Jones said. “It is difficult to simulate the size and speed of other teams with our limited numbers.”

As the Wildcats rebuild their program, they are faced with a small number of athletes, many of whom are inexperienced on the field. Jones is optimistic, as his team worked hard to score throughout the game.

“We will continue to improve each week, we have things that we will work on based on the game on Friday to continue to improve each day,” Jones said. “I felt our effort was really good, our kids continued to play hard. I felt our offense moved the ball we just made some mistakes that come with being a young and inexperienced team.”

Each of the players made a difference on the field and Jones hopes to build on the individual and team strengths.

“I felt all of our players made significant contributions during the game, we gained a lot of valuable experience and will keep improving each day to get better,” he said. “We need to learn quickly how to handle other teams size since we are not a big team, we will work on those things in practice to continue to improve.”

Team statistics were not available at press time. The Wildcats will host the Arthur County Wolves on Friday, Sept. 2. Arthur County opened their season hosting the Potter-Dix Coyotes and sent the Coyotes packing with a 69-0 loss.