Herders end season with loss to Moorcroft

The moon shined down through the clear night sky in Moorcroft the night of Oct. 25 as the Glenrock High School Herders and Moorcroft Wolves faced off in their last regular season football game of the year.
Glenrock lost the road game 18–38, ending their season with a 2–7 record. Head coach Ryan Collier chalked up the team’s loss to Moorcroft to consistent issues for there Herders — mental mistakes and costly penalties.
“We get the ball, we have a holding penalty that pulls us back and we punt away. We stop them three-and-out and then we have a roughing the punter penalty,” Collier said. “It’s little things like that that hurt us all year long, we’ve just got to figure out how to get better at it.”
The Herders committed 11 penalties in the game. Glenrock’s first score of the game came in the second quarter, a one-yard touchdown run by quarterback Adam Bearfield. They missed the two-point conversion and the game was tied at 6–6. By halftime, they trailed 6–12 to the home team.
Scoring for both teams kicked into high gear in the second half, Moorcroft scored once on a fumble recovery when senior Cade Griffitts coughed up the ball and on a 73-yard run. Sandwiched between the two touchdowns was a three-yard run by Kade Guenther for Glenrock’s second score of the day.
Aidan Orozco kicked off the fourth quarter with an 18-yard touchdown run. Moorcroft got into the endzone two more times before the game ended — along with the Herders’ year. Like the rest of the season, mental lapses and defensive risk taking hurt the team in the end. Three of the Wolves touchdowns came on runs of more than 40 yards.
While the rushing attack was still the team’s offensive focus, Glenrock had their best passing day of the season against the Wolves. Bearfield completed one of his four passes for 26 yards while Guenther converted both of his passes for 17 yards. Guenther caught the pass from Bearfield and senior Cade Griffitts caught both of Guenther’s passes.
The Herders ran the football 52 times between eight different runners. Orozco led Glenrock in yards with 95 and his one touchdown. Guenther was just behind his teammate in rushing yards, collecting 93 on the ground.
The only other player with double-digit carries was Dawson Blaylock. Blaylock ran the ball 12 times for 28 yards. Bearfield rushed twice for 15 yards and Griffitts ran twice for one positive yard. The three players to rush the ball one time were Lane Raney, Dusting Simmons and Luke Lythgoe.
No single member of the Herders defense did too much on their own — a true team effort.  The only turnover forced by the Herders was an interception by Logan Jones. Guenther led the team with six total tackles in the game, including five solo. Raney, Simmons and Jake Redman all had 3.5 total tackles against the Wolves.
Before he gets to evaluations of the players and planning an offseason workout schedule, Collier wants to evaluate himself and the rest of the coaches.
“There’s always more growth in loss than there is in winning so those losses will end up helping us in the long run figuring out player evaluation, figuring out X’s and O’s, figuring out calls on the field. All of that type of stuff is going to be a benefit to us,” Collier said.
The beginning of the 2020 football schedule will be released by the Wyoming High School Athletic Association in November.