Blue Dragons get that winning feeling back

By Joel Muhs
Sports Editor

It may have taken a few minutes, but the Hutchinson Community College football team finally arrived in emphatic fashion as the Blue Dragons throttled Fort Scott 55-6 Saturday night at Gowans Stadium.

After starting the season 0-2 with losses coming to Coffeyville and Butler, the Blue Dragons found their championship groove from a season ago, coming off a bye-week with a dominant performance over Fort Scott.

“It’s fun to watch them play football and fun to watch them play well. I mean, that’s exciting,” HutchCC coach Drew Dallas said on their first win of the season. “They came to work for two weeks and ended up getting a win out of it, and it’s because of the hard work they put in during that time. With the start that we’re off to, they very easily could have folded up shop and not coming out and worked hard and just kind of gone through the motions, and they didn’t do that”

The Blue Dragons put their foot on the gas early and often to start the game, scoring on their first three offensive possessions, which resulted in a 17-0 lead at the end of the first quarter and propelled them to a 27-6 lead at halftime.

“It’s great. We finally got our mojo back, is the way I think about it,” sophomore quarterback Dylan Laible said. “The last three weeks were kind of rough for us, but now we’re back on track and about to win the rest of the season.”

After the disappointing 0-2 start following a national championship, the Blue Dragons found their championship energy from a season ago that was lacking to start the season.

“I thought at times they just kind of hit those lulls in the second quarter a little bit, but I mean, for the most part we were excited to be out there playing a football game,” Dallas said on the energy level of his players throughout the game. “We were hungry, we had a bad taste in our mouth and two weeks of sitting off with a bad taste in your mouth you want to get back out there and play and that’s why these guys are here to play football.”

Confidence has been hard to accumulate for HutchCC in the early stages of the season. However, the big win over Fort Scott can help provide momentum for the remainder of the season.

“I think it just teaches us how to win,” Dallas said on a potential confidence boost following the win. “We hadn’t won a football game yet this (season) and even though it’s early in the season, every win you have you got to enjoy it. It teaches us how to do it and the things we got to improve on to continue to get better.”

Although it wasn’t the picture perfect start to the season like the previous one, the goal remains the same for the Blue Dragons, which is to hoist a trophy at the end of the season.

“There’s only one goal and that’s to win the conference championship game,” Laible said.

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