Cougars fall to Rangers
Niwot finds it hard to sustain drives against Lewis-palmer
ERIE — There was some hope initially the Niwot football team might be able to turn things around in its first home game of 2020, but the Cougars’ rough streak continues.
At Erie High School on Thursday night, the Cougars fell 48-16 to Lewis-palmer. Niwot has been mired in a winless stretch dating back to Sept. 20, 2019, and first-year head coach Nikolas Blume had no delusions as to what he was walking into when he stepped up to be the next coach tasked with turning the Niwot program around.
While NHS continues to take its lumps on the gridiron, Blume remains confident in the Cougars future.
“For us, ever y game is just a fistfight,” Blume said. “We’re thin, man. Tonight we probably played 15, 16 kids again and that’s been the theme pretty much the whole season. We just don’t have numbers right now. We’ve got 43 kids on the roster and 23 of them are freshmen and some of them have never played football before. We knew it was a project coming in and it’s just you’re seeing that for us ever y night.
“So our conversation is: you just gotta keep swinging.”
The Cougars (0-4) led early in Thursday’s game after Ashton Campie kicked an 11-yard field goal on the team’s first drive of the game. The Rangers (2-2), however, scored 21 unanswered points before Niwot scored again on a 85-yard pass from quarterback Ayden Bartko to Ben Classen late in the second quar ter.
Lewis-palmer led 28-9 at halftime and held the Cougars scoreless in the second half until Bar tko hit Craig Wright for a score with seven seconds remaining in the game. It was the 14th time the two have connected on pass plays this season and the Bar tko-to-wright connection has now produced over 350 yards and four touchdowns.
Despite Wright’s recent hot streak, Classen proved to be Bartko’s target of choice against Lewis-palmer. The sophomore wideout caught four passes and finished with 124 receiving yards. Easten Leatherwood led the Cougars ground attack with 33 of the team’s 85 rushing yards.
The Cougars flashed some big-play potential with Classen’s long touchdown, as well as senior Cooper Ackerman intercepting a pass on Lewispalmer’s first drive and returning it to the 1-yard line. But Blume said a lack of consistency and capitalizing on key moments, like failing to turn Ackerman’s turnover into a touchdown, are holding the Cougars back the most.
“That’s been ever y game for us too,” Blume said. “Not only is it consistency, but you’ve got to ride momentum. The battle for us right now is ever y time things are going well, we get some momentum and we can’t capitalize on it. We’ve got to hold on to the momentum when we get it and we’re just not doing that right now.”
The Cougars, who also lost three fumbles in Thursday’s game, will hit the road again next Thursday to take on Discover y Canyon.
Brad Cochi: bcochi@prairiemountainmedia.com or on Twitter @Bradcochi.