El Dorado Springs Bulldogs lose to Skyline 41-24

By Kelley Beckner

Head Football Coach

“Change is the end result of all true learning,” Leo Buscaglia.  We are learning as team right now. We are learning what it means to be a good teammate, to be a good leader and a positive follower. Most importantly we are learning how hard the game of football truly can be. It takes a very unique individual to play football. It is uncommon to run your body full speed into another. With that, it takes a lot of learning to do things the proper way, all the time, not just here or there, but every single time.

On Friday, there were moments of great execution, then there were moments of the opposite. Through it all, however, our character never wavered. It felt close a couple of times, but our players remained composed and were never truly out of the game until towards the end.

Give credit to Skyline, their coaches did an excellent job of coaching and their players executing. They are a solid program. You have to expect those things from a program like that.

We struggled finding a consistent run game throughout the night. At times we held the ball too long in the backfield and took some heavy losses, which put us behind the chains and off schedule calling plays. At one point, we were first and goal from the six yard line, and ended the drive fourth down and long from outside the 20. If we want to win ball games or advance in the playoffs we have to score on 90% of drives. Meaning, every time we have the ball on offense we need to score. We do not have the luxury yet of having the depth or experience to have missed opportunities scoring.

I feel very confident in our coaches and our players to take a step in the right directions this week. We are treating it preparation-wise like a playoff game. We are to the point in the season where there isn’t going to be a lot of changes, drastic or not, happening within the program. What we will do, is continue to learn from our opponents to manipulate what we do effectively against they want to do us.

This Friday, we are back at home for Senior Night. We will host Adrian, who is a big, physical team in an established program. It will be a very bruising type game as I suspect them to try and win the possession battle and run the clock out, keeping our offense off the field. We need to start fast this week. If we receive the ball first we need to go down the field and score. If we are defense, we need to stop them on their opening drive and counter back with a score. If we can get them running lateral I think the depth and conditioning we do have, will come into play.

I am anxious for this week of practice and this week’s game. I feel we have enough packages on offense to be effective vs any defense we see, and we have the knowledge of the defense schemes to be able to line up and play fast/aggressive.

As always, I encourage all readers to come out to the ball field this Friday as we honor our senior football players and close out the regular season in front of our home crowd. Thank you for the support. #bulldogpride #onefamily.