Last Thursday Night the Hitchcock-Tulare Patriots battled it out with Iroquois-Lake Preston. Years ago we played in Iroquois and the field was under water at the time. This year the area around Iroquois' field was under water, but the field itself has been much improved.
We were expecting to play HT Patriots football against I/LP and we did. Our seniors step up to lead our team to victory. #62 Mikael Nielson lead our line and our team to block. We ended up with over 300 yards rushing. #23 Blaze Binger had 249 yards and two touchdowns . #8 Payton Chasing Hawk had a nice 35 yard run for a touchdown and one two point conversion. One of our sophomores, #5 Derek Johnson scored a 5 yard touchdown run and two 2-point conversions.
Defensively our seniors step-up again. #23 Blaze Binger had eight solo tackles and two for loss. #62 Mikael Nielson had 7.5 total tackles. #8 Payton Chasing Hawk had a big time interception. Our juniors, #55 Preston Wipf had 5 solo tackles with two sacks, and Morgon Bottum had 6 total tackles with 1.5 for a loss. One of our new comers, #50 Tucker Gilbert ended up with two tackles for a loss. We had Patriots swarming the ball; it was great to see that again.
Overall, much improved by every HT Patriots football player. We still have things to work on and improve in the coming weeks, but we definitely got on the right track for the HT Patriots against I/LP. We look forward to facing the Northwestern Wildcats Saturday night September 7, at 7PM in Mellette. It doesn't look like it will be live streamed at this time. Thank you to our communities for the great support and ask for you all to come out to support us Saturday night. Be a State Champion today. #GoHTPatriots