G’Day mate! Australian kicker Nestus Burger makes overtime field goal in Blue Dragons win

By Greta Klein
Sports Editor
X – @gmklein32

Lining up the field goal, sophomore placekicker Nestus Burger takes three steps back and two steps to the left as he positions his foot to potentially kick the game-winning field goal.

Next, he takes two-and-a-half steps forward, makes contact with the ball and launches it high and straight in between the two yellow posts on the south end of Gowans Stadium. Burger throws his helmet off and falls backward with excitement, as top-ranked Hutchinson beat Iowa Central 33-30 in overtime on Saturday.

In celebration of Burger’s heroics, his teammates swarm around him, hoisting him up on their shoulders, and in the process giving Burger a bloody nose.

“I was confident in myself that I could make it,” Burger said. “Oh man, when it came off my foot, I just threw it down the middle and I went through all the emotions at one time.”

The confidence does not stop with Burger, and starts with Blue Dragons coach Drew Dallas knowing his abilities.

“He does everything he needs to do in his training to make sure that he’s prepared for that moment,” Dallas said. “When he’s standing over the ball, even though it’s in a good little breeze he has confidence in his ability and leg and he stepped in there.”

In addition to making headlines last year when he kicked a 50-yard career field goal against Dodge City, Burger can now add a game-winning kick in overtime to his career stats.

“Tons of confidence in Nestus,” Dallas said. “Hopefully this is something that continues to springboard him forward. He’s a super-gifted placekicker, and we saw that tonight.”

Dallas is pleased with special teams as a whole in addition to Burger. Without other important players carrying out their roles during the play, the field goal would not have been possible.

“That’s a hard operation there at the end,” Dallas said. “The snap, kick, protection, hold, and all those guys, just kudos to them. It’s one play, walk away with a win if everybody does their job. And we saw that out of that unit, so that was big time.”

Despite the success at the end of the game, the beginning for the Blue Dragons was not quite as remarkable.

 In the first half, the Tritons had possession of the ball for nearly 20 minutes compared to the Blue Dragons who only had the ball for 9:51.

“I told (the team) at halftime, just like coach Dallas said, there’s gonna be adversity at some point in the season,” sophomore quarterback Samari Collier said. “(Iowa Central) came out in different looks, and we just had to switch around our personnel and attack their weaknesses so we went and had time to adjust and came out with the win.”

With 6:19 left in the fourth quarter, Iowa Central got an interception return for a touchdown, putting the Blue Dragons in a 14-point deficit.

“It’s easy to hang your head, look in the mirror, and say, it wasn’t our day today, and take one on the chin,” Dallas said. “And they didn’t do that, they battled back and responded the right way.”

The Blue Dragons saw this situation as an opportunity to fight back and show what kind of team they are.

“I hope we were able to grow through those last six minutes and not just because we won, but because we were in that situation,” Dallas said. “We saw glimpses of what we can be when we do things the right way and we played the right kind of energy.”

The Blue Dragons came back and tied it 30-30 with 1:19 remaining in the fourth quarter. That’s when freshman receiver Derrick Salley Jr. scored on a 15-yard pass from Collier to send the game into overtime.

“We knew that was a good football team going into it,” Dallas said. “Hats off to them. I thought they played extremely well for three and a half quarters there. They brought the energy level to us, and we knew if we were going to let them stick around, it was going to be a dogfight and it certainly was.”

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