Tongue River And Big Horn Football Teams Prepare For Non-Conference Opponents To Start 2022 Season

This week is the first week of the regular season in Class 2A.

Tongue River and Big Horn each get one non-conference game on their schedule before the games become more important.

TR plays at Thermopolis in a tune-up game ahead of the conference portion of the schedule.

The Eagles haven’t made the post-season, since they lost in the 2016 state championship game.

Coach Steve Hanson says this year’s team has some players that are eager to get that monkey off of their back.

“This junior and senior class, they’re really hungry for this opportunity. They’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, and we’ve got some sophomores who are really showing that they want to be major contributors and so I’m really pleased about that, and I’m just hoping we win the games we need to win, so we can find ourselves in position to be playing in November, when it’s a 1-week season and it matters.”

Big Horn hosts Lovell who are last year’s 2A state runners-up.

The Rams scrimmaged Natrona’s sophomores last week, in which the varsity only played the first half.

Last year BH made the playoffs, but the 2nd half of the season did not go in their favor, as they lost their final 5 games.

Many teams go by the motto of one game at a time, and Coach Kirk McLaughlin says that’s especially true this week, because the Rams have an issue with the Bulldogs.

“We’ve got a chip on our shoulder. They’re well aware that we got shutout the last 2 years. The score doesn’t look very close. It was closer than it looked. That was a very good team last year. We just didn’t go in with a lot of intensity, we started slow that game, and our folks can start fast, we got to take it to them. We know they’re going to be well coached, we know they’re going to be good, we know they’re going to be bigger than us, but we got to come with the intent that we’re going to play to win.”

Kickoff times for both the Rams and Eagles are at 6pm.