Snow College suffers tough loss to Arizona Western

EPHRAIM — The Snow College Badgers lost their first home game in nearly five years with a 35-17 loss to the short-handed Arizona Western Matadors.

Snow College's last home game loss came against Glendale in 2004 where they lost 23-21.

"It's definitely a new experience for all of us in the locker room," Snow head coach Steve Coburn said.

Snow College was playing a short-handed Matador team, who had 10 players serving suspensions. The Matadors ran for 297 yards and four touchdowns compared to just 88 yards and no touchdowns for the Badgers.

"We had no current game film on them since they hadn't played yet," sophomore team captain Gavin Jones (Orem High School) said. "We were expecting them to pass the ball more, so in the first half our defense was more spread out allowing them to run."

The Badgers had a hard time protecting sophomore quarterback Quinn Mecham (Timpview High School) as he was sacked six times and the Badgers found themselves down 21-3 at halftime. Snow fought hard in the beginning of the second half to make it 21-10 at the end of the third quarter after making some halftime adjustments.

"Players get more of a feel for what they're doing after the first half," Coburn said. "We adjusted to a slide protection to protect Quinn, and we made some adjustments defensively to help us stop the running game."

In the fourth quarter the Badgers had the ball on the Matadors' 5-yard line with the score 21-10. Sophomore running back, Tyson Church (North San Pete High School) then fumbled the football at the 1-yard line with the Matadors recovering it. The Matadors then ran the football for a 96 yard touchdown to end all hopes of a comeback.

"The coaching staff told the team 'OK you've had some adversity, what now?,'" Coburn said. "We'll bounce back; these kids are resilient and will be ready to go."

The team seems to believe the same thing the coaching staff believes.

"We have a lot to improve upon," Gavin Jones said. "We've got that loss out of the way, and we know what it tastes like. We just need to learn from every mistake and come back next week and fight even harder."

GAME NOTES: Sophomore offensive lineman Devin Tavana, a NJCAA First-Team Preseason All-American, suffered a mild sprained ankle at the end of the game and his status is day-to-day. Sophomore offensive lineman, Mikel Overgaard, also suffered a mild sprained ankle during the game, but had it taped and came back out. He is expected to play next week when Snow takes on eighth-ranked Georgia Military.

Editor's note: The Snowdrift is the weekly student newspaper for Snow College.