Gore travels to Wilburton for first game

G o r e o p e n s its new high school f o o t b a l l season on the road Friday night when the Pirates travel south to take on the Wilburton Diggers.

Kickoff at Sheldon D. Taylor Field is scheduled for 7 p.m. Last year fourth-ranked Gore was unbeaten (10-0) in the regular season and 11-1 overall after falling 20-19 at home to No. 10 Woodland in the second round of the Class A playoffs. The Pirates shut out Wewoka 61-0 at home in its postseason opener. Gore has claimed three straight District A-8 title and two undefeated regular seasons the past three years.

Gore‚s returning starters on offense are linemen Gabe Dozier, Garrett Douthit, Nick Wolf, Cas Moore and Layne Ward, tight end Wyatt Marrel, running back Gunner Dozier, fullback Dayne Perryman and wide receivers Ben Kirkpatrick, Liam Edwards, Blue Steward and Journey Shells. Christian O‚Connor and Jackson Duke handle the kicking chores and Perryman is the punter.

The Pirates‚ returning defensive starters are Gabe Dozier, Douthit, Wolf and Marrel at the defensive line positions, Perryman and Alex Hallum at the inside linebacker spots and Keigan Reid, Blane Barnes, O‚Connor, Kirkpatrick and Duke at the secondary positions.

Class 2A Wilburton was 1-9 overall last season and the Diggers have a new head coach (Troy Bullard) this year.

“They look pretty good on film,” Gore head coach Brandon Tyler said. “They‚ve got a good tailback that runs downhill really good. Pretty solid up front and defensively they fly around. They‚re much improved from what I‚ve seen in the past.” Some of the Diggers key players on offense are running backs Troy Clark (6-foot, 185-pound junior) and Hunter Pate (5-7, 190, soph.), quarterback Braiden Grossnicklaus (6-1, 155, fr.) and linemen Brendon Miller (6-1, 280, sr.) and Gunner Hawkins (6-1, 190, soph.).

“They‚re going to be in the spread on offense, just run a lot of inside zone and counter and just try to throw it around a little bit off of some play-action type stuff,” Tyler said. “They try to hit the deep ball every now and again with the wheel route. The quarterback throws a good ball.

“They‚re pretty young. I think they‚ve only got about two or three seniors on the roster. I know they had a coaching change and coach Bullard is doing a great job with them from what I was able to see on film this weekend and it seems like he‚s got them going in the right direction.”

“Stop the run,” Tyler said was one of the keys for Gore‚s defense this week. “It‚s going to all start with their tailback. We‚ve got to make sure we gang tackle him because he‚s a big, strong kid who weighs about 190. He runs downhill very hard so we‚ve got to get to him and make sure we wrap him up. Just got to tackle really good.”

A few of Wilburton‚s key players on defense are defensive end Zyan Mafukidze (6-2, 215, jr.), linebackers Troy Clark and Billy Brooks (5-10, 175, jr.) and defensive back Floyd Clark (6-0, 150, soph.).

Last season Mafukidze recorded 44 tackles and three sacks, Troy Clark had 46 tackles and two sacks and Brooks and Floyd Clark registered 38 and 27 tackles, respectively.

“They‚re going to run a 3-4, so it‚s the same thing we got to see last week against Heavener,” Tyler remarked. “They‚ve got one defensive end (Zyan Mafukidze) that‚s really, really good who gets off the ball, pursues the ball really well and we‚re definitely going to have to make sure we‚re blocking him on whatever we‚re doing because he does such a great job on defense. The linebackers are pretty aggressive and it seems like they play downhill pretty good as well.”

“Up front we‚ve got to take care of the line of scrimmage, dominate the line of scrimmage, and if we can do that we should be ok.”

The Pirates scrimmaged at Heavener last Friday.

“I thought we did a lot of good things,” Tyler said. “We‚ve still got to continue to get better. I thought Noah (Cooper) threw the ball really well, thought our offensive line blocked well and Gunner (Dozier) had a great night running the football. We‚ve just got to continue to improve. We can‚t get complacent with what we‚re doing. We‚ve got to get ready for Wilburton and have a great week of practice and try to start this year off 1-0.”