THE DALLES — The Dalles High Riverhawk played their third consecutive OSAA Class 4A football road game Oct. 2 versus the Baker High Bulldogs, with hopes of continuing the momentum they gained from a win a week earlier. But the Riverhawks fell behind early and were unable to overcome a large deficit, losing, 47-20, at Baker High School.
On Sept. 25, The Riverhawks (0-1 Special District 5, 2-3 overall) recorded a 37- 6 road win at Gladstone (0-5). Baker was a step up in competition; the Bulldogs were ranked 10th in Class 4A.
Third-year Coach Nate Timmons said: “They [Bulldogs] have quite a few really good athletes and they’ve been playing together for kind of a long time, so it’s always hard to stop a team like that. I was really proud of our guys and we battled hard the whole time, which was good to see.
“Baker (4-1) has a very solid and talented team for sure. It will be interesting to see how they match up with La Grande (1-0 SD5, 3-3 overall) in our league.”
La Grande is the defending league champion and will play the Riverhawks at home on Oct. 16; La Grande hosts Baker on Oct. 8.
“We have a pretty young team with lots of sophomores [eight] playing and I thought it was great to see how well they played against Baker,” said Timmons.
“The scoreboard really didn’t tell the whole story,” said Timmons, whose squad had three interceptions on defense. “I just felt like they [Bulldogs] had a couple of plays that went their way and not ours. Ben Graham [Riverhawk quarterback] was making some really good passes and our receivers were doing great. We had some really good plays and we did lots of good things. We just had a few things that didn’t go our way though. It was just very hard for us to come back from a large deficit.”
The Riverhawks play Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. in a nonleague game at Class 3A Umatilla; it marks the fourth straight road game for the Riverhawks.
“We’ll have a shorter week to prepare for our next game than what we normally do,” said Timmons. “Umatilla has a lot of good athletes and so we’ll have to make sure that we have a good game plan. I feel pretty good about our chance to get a win … It’s been kind of a good experience for our kids to travel on the road a lot for all these games recently. It will be nice to play our last two games of the season at home.”
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