By Con Marshall
The Chadron High School football team is apt to have its hands full Friday night when it visits the Gering Bulldogs. They will be playing a potentially dangerous opponent. Kickoff will be at 7.
While the Cardinals are riding high with their 7-0 record, outscoring the opponents by a 254 to 58 margin, Gering is having its best season in more than a decade. Coach Danny O’Boyle’s team is 5-2, making this the first year since 2012 that Gering has won more than two games.
Dating back to 2012 and entering this season, the Bulldogs had an 11-win, 88-loss record. Five of those seasons they finished 0-9, were 1-8 once and 2-7 five times, including each of the last three.
The story is different this year. Bolstered by some talented skill position players and what O’Boyle called “serviceable” linemen with considerable experience at the start of the season, the Bulldogs won their first four games. They defeated Torrington 34-14, Mitchell 40-26, Alliance 47-12 and Ogallala 36-8.
McCook then edged them 24-23 and Scottsbluff, now ranked third in Class B in the state, prevailed 35-0.
Last Friday night, the Bulldogs got back on the winning side, defeating Lexington 37-21 while proving they can both run the ball and throw it. Junior quarterback Rece Knight threw for 235 yards and four touchdowns, two of them to senior Barron Williams, who had 106 yards receiving. In addition, running back Creighton Beals racked up 110 yards rushing, including 71 yards for a touchdown.
During the win over Ogallala, Knight and Williams connected on TD passes of 21 and 50 yards, Beals scored on an 83-yard run and Bo Gable went 48 yards to the end zone, both in the fourth quarter.
Beals won the Class B 300-meter hurdles championship at the State Track Meet last May.
While Gering still leads the all-time rivalry with Chadron 40-32-3, the last time the Bulldogs defeated the Cards was 2017 by a 22-14 score. Twice since then the outcome was close even though the Bulldogs were struggling. The Cards won by just 16-14 in 2020, when Gering finished 0-9, and last year Chadron won 22-16.
The latter game also was in Gering, the second of the season. The Bulldogs kicked a field goal and scored on a 68-yard pass and an 82-yard kickoff return. Otherwise, the Cardinals played outstanding defense and got 245 yards rushing and three touchdowns from running back Quinn Bailey to prevail. The last TD came on a 46-yard run early in the fourth period.
Bailey has run for more than 200 yards in all seven games this autumn and now has 1,928 yards rushing for the season to go with 29 touchdowns, four of them on pass receptions.