Hutchinson, Kan. - JUCO football is back. With the 2020 NJCAA Football season delayed seven months and being pushed back into the springtime, it was a little odd being under the Friday night lights in March, but JUCO football is finally back. The Coffeyville Community College Red Raven Football team opened their 2020-21 season on the road against the #1 ranked Hutchinson Blue Dragons. The Red Ravens had some fight in them but fell to the #1 NJCAA ranked Hutchinson Community College 33-10. With the loss, Coffeyville falls to an 0-1 record.
This game was the first game back for Red Raven head coach Jeff Leiker. Coach Leiker had served as the Red Raven head football coach from 2000 through the 2007 season before being named as the Red Raven Athletic Director. In 2019 Coach Leiker agreed to come back to the sideline as the head coach as well as maintaining his Athletic Director responsibilities.
This game was also the first game being played since former Raven head coach Aaron Flores passed away.
Hutchinson came out quickly after receiving the opening kickoff and with barely two minutes gone in the game, Hutchinson's quarterback, CJ Ogbonna, scrambled 30 yards for a touchdown and the Blue Dragons had the early 7-0 lead.
Coffeyville came back after the kick-off and drove down the field converting four third-down conversions on their way to the two-yard line of Hutchinson. On a third and goal from the two, Raven redshirt freshman quarterback Kolbe Langhi dropped back for a quick pass but was sacked at the 13-yard line. Coffeyville converted the field goal to pull within 4 points, but still found themselves behind 7-3.
In the second quarter, Hutchinson added to their score with a six-yard rushing touchdown. The two-point conversion failed and Hutchinson was up 13-3.
Two Blue Dragon field goals saw Hutchinson build their lead to 19-3 going into halftime.
At the start of the third quarter, some lightning moved into the area and the game was delayed about 45 minutes due to some close lightning strikes. Once the game resumed, Hutchinson quickly found the end zone with a 35-yard touchdown pass. The score and extra point extended Hutchinson's lead to 26-3.
Coffeyville's freshman running back, Star Thomas, was able to score on a 20-yard touchdown gallop to pull the Ravens to 26-10 midway through the third quarter.
Hutchinson closed out the third quarter with a two-yard touchdown run to push the score back out to 33-10.
Neither team was able to score in the fourth quarter and the Red Ravens found themselves on the wrong side of a 33-10 defeat.
Hutchinson exactly doubled Coffeyville's total yards of offense (410 to 205) and Hutchinson had ten more first downs (23) than Coffeyville (13) when looking at the boxscore.
Next up for Coffeyville will be a road game to Dodge City Community College. The Dodge City matchup is scheduled for Saturday, April 3rd with kickoff at 1:00 p.m.