Final regular season battle: Bulldogs seek conference title against Dragons

By Calvin Silvers

It’s the final week of the regular season for high school football, and the area is primed for a high-stakes showdown as the Mid-Buchanan Dragons travel to take on their bitter rivals, the East Buchanan Bulldogs. The bulldogs are not only aiming to play spoiler to the Dragons’ perfect season, but also to clinch yet another KCI Conference title to add to their trophy case.

East Buchanan enters their Week 9 showdown with just one loss, suffered by Savannah in Week 2. Since then, the Bulldogs have battled through injuries and worked to adjust players to new roles, and it’s been nothing but victories in the win column ever since.

“We had to figure out how to come back and win, even though we’re missing a lot of guys,” head coach Daniel Ritter said. “Some of those guys are back now and during that time we had a lot of guys step up that we may have not been expecting, so I feel ike we’re hitting our stride.”

In recent years, the Bulldogs have dominated the series, handing the Dragons five consecutive losses, including matchups in both the regular season and postseason.

However, like any sport, rosters change and new dynamics emerge, making this year’s game a unique challenge that can’t simply be measured against past encounters.

“We have some guys that are kind of rookies on the field, even though they may be older in age,” Ritter said. “They’re going to have to prove it, they’re going to have to show their worth and nothing that happened in the past really matters at this point.”

As the pressure mounts, East Buch will enjoy the advantage of a supportive home crowd, eager to add another element to the contest. The team is also determined to demonstrate to the community that they can uphold the winning traditions established by their predecessors.

“We love the pressure,” senior Landon Delong said. “Our team doesn’t feel like we are respected as much we should be just because of our seniors in the past leaving, but I believe that this year we can go just as far as last year’s seniors.”

One key to maintaining that success lies in their defense, as the Bulldogs have held half of their opponents to under 10 points this season, surrendering an average of just 11 points per game.

“Throughout our defense we just have dogs everywhere,” senior Aidan Smith said. “Whether it’s on the d-line, db’s, linebackers, everyone’s doing their job and doing the right thing and we’re able to create offense off of that.”

At the end of the day, both programs hold the utmost respect for one another, but when the sun sets on Friday, it will be an all-out battle.

While these two teams could face off again in districts, for now, it’s all about taking down the Dragons.

“It means a lot to us and we really want to beat this team and I know they really want to beat us,” Delong said. “Ii think we’re just going to come in with a good attitude and just lay the hammer as best we can.”