The hardest part of the weekend for the Dubois Rams was the long bus ride to Hanna to play the Hanna Elk Mountain Medicine Bow Miners. Dubois roared to a 56-point first-period lead, then put the offense in cruise control in a devastating 78-0 South 6-man Conference win. The lopsided game moved the Rams to 6-1 on the season with just a single regular season contest against unbeaten Burlington, the North Conference champion, next Friday in Big Horn County.
The Rams scored in a wide variety of ways. Nick Navas had the best effort in his career in adding 22 points for Dubois on nine conversion kicks and the first field goal of the season for the Rams.
Navas hit a 28-yard field goal that scored four points for the Rams. In 6-man football, with the difficulty of blocking six charging defenders with just four blockers, the conversion kick is worth two points, while running in or throwing a conversion pass from the three-yard line is only worth a single point.
The kick from the 11-yard line by Navas is relatively rare in 6-man football.
What wasn’t rare was the average per carry by three Dubois running backs. In 6-man the rushing totals are higher with quality running backs. That’s one of the reasons it takes 15-yards for a first down instead of the 10-yards required in 9-man or 11-man football.
Still, the totals were impressive. Wyatt Trembly had 254 yards on just 14 rushing attempts, an impressive 18.1 yards-per-carry, but it paled in comparison with the averages of teammates Kaleb Gleim and Jonah Oard. Gleim rushed for over a hundred yards with an average per carry of 22.8-yards. Oard was even more impressive in just three attempts. Oard scored two touchdowns, with a long of 44-yards, and 88-yards overall while averaging 29.3 yards on each attempt.
Adding to the rushing total was Daniel Grubb with a single carry of one yard for another touchdown.
With the visitor’s side of the scorebook resembling a run-away pinball machine, the Rams were quiet through the air. Senior quarterback Ryan Wells threw just five passes, completing three for 98 yards and a 38-yard touchdown to Clayton Rux.
In all the Rams tallied nine touchdowns with most on the ground by the talented trio of backs, but special teams and the Dubois defense scored as well.
Hanna only kicked off once in the game, but Trembly made the best of it on a 44-yard scamper into the end zone for a special teams score. Wells intercepted a Hanna pass and took it the distance for another score, and Trembly added two more on a safety when he tackled a Miner running back in the end zone.
Rux and Trembly led defensively with 17 total tackles each.
Wells’ interception was just one of six Hanna turnovers. The Miners lost five fumbles on the afternoon with Navas recovering two of them, and Wells, Rux, and Trembly covering one each.
Dubois has sewn up the second-seed from the South Conference and will host a playoff game in two weeks against the third-place team from the North, most likely Meeteetse.
After that, it’s most likely a return trip to Burlington in the semi-finals unless the Huskies are upset in the opening round.