Blue Hawks look to soar despite heartbreaking season open loss
Aug. 28—DICKINSON — The Dickinson State University Blue Hawks might have suffered a heartbreaking, 20-19, road loss to Rocky Mountain College on Saturday, Aug. 26 to open their season.
With momentum on their side and the offense clicking, head coach Pete Stanton and his staff elected to go for the 2-point conversion and really get the Blue Hawks started with a bang. They came up a little short as starting quarterback Will Madler's passing attempt sailed a little high, but that doesn't mean the team doesn't have lofty expectations in mind as they begin their North Star Athletic Conference schedule this weekend at the Biesiot Activities Center on Saturday, Sept. 1, at 1 p.m. MDT.
Dickinson State fans will be happy to learn the Blue Hawks will have their home-opener versus North Star Athletic Association foes Mayville State, against which they have a 20-1 record throughout the series's history, and that will be a solid way for DSU's squad to open NSAA conference play and could be a great way to wash the taste of that 1-point loss out of their mouths, quickly.
The Blue Hawks have been in fervent preparation since early August, but scrimmages, drills and intrasquad games are no substitute for live action, and Stanton said the team is even more prepared now that they've had a chance to get their hearts racing in such a close, early contest.
"Our guys are always going to play hard, and obviously we saw good things and our team doing that (against Rocky Mountain College), just battling back and they had a chance to go up a couple of scores and our guys hung in there," Stanton said. "We like our team right now, obviously it was a really tough loss and a tough pill to swallow, but at the same end you've got to move on and we've got good things ahead of us for this season."
Stanton added, after the "Football Night in Dickinson" event on Aug. 12, which featured an intrasquad game between the DSU offense and defense, "We did a good job there; I thought we ran the ball pretty well and that's always our goal: With our offensive line, we want to be able to run the ball well and I thought they did a good job on the offensive line today."
While the Blue Hawks are the current favorites to win the North Star Athletic Association title for a ninth-consecutive year — as picked by a recent coaches' poll released this week — there is much work to be done in the coming week. The team finished with a 6-0 record last season in the NSAA and went 8-3 overall, but lost to Northwestern (Iowa), 49-7 in the first round of the NAIA Championship Series, but there are two more NSAA conference games on the schedule this year and the NAIA changed their playoff rules to allow for an automatic bid if they're in the top-20 and earn a conference title. Under the right circumstances, DSU can host a playoff game here in Dickinson for the first time since beating Montana Tech at the BAC in 2004.
Fast-forward to 2023, where DSU is ranked 21st in the NAIA preseason poll after finishing at No. 17 last year. Stanton has been through those ups-and-downs after being at the helm for the last 10 years, but he said with 7 returning starters on both sides of the ball there are high hopes for the coming schedule.
Among the key offensive returning players are wide receiver Noah Sickler and offensive lineman Brandon Bennick, who both were 1st-Team All-Conference players last year, 2nd-Team All-Conference tight end Galen Brantley and wide receiver Kaden Kuntz. Meanwhile, defensive returners like 1st-Team All-Conference players defensive lineman Krew Mathern, linebacker Keaton Meschke and defensive back Jayden Hartwell will combine with 2nd-Team All-Conference defensive lineman Matt Anderson to keep opponents out of the end zone.
The superlatives don't end there, as the Blue Hawks gathered to 17 NSAA postseason honors last year and Mathern, who is a Dickinson native, also earned American Football Coaches Association as a defensive All-American, along with Dawson McGlothin being named a second-team All-American. According to the team's website, "Dickinson State was the only school to have two defensive players named to the AFCA All-American teams behind a defensive unit that allowed just 247 yards and 16 points per game. Mathern set a new DSU career record for Tackles-for-loss with 54. He also briefly held the single season record at 18.5 before teammate JaQuawhann Booth broke his record in the same game. McGlothlin secured 35 tackles and seven interceptions on the season to anchor a secondary that thrived on creating turnovers."
"I like the way we move the ball on offense and I like the way we hung in there on defense, knowing that we have a few things to work on and improvements to make," Stanton said.
For more information about the DSU Blue Hawks football team, please keep reading your Dickinson Press and/or visit their website at
https://www.dsubluehawks.com/sports/fball/index
. You also can watch the game live this Saturday evening at 6 on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/@bluehawkathletics4241
.
