By SHEALYN PRATT
The Ranger football team has had a season marked by losses and adversity. The Rangers are the only football team in the Great American Conference at the NCAA Division II level without a win this season.
While the record may speak for itself, several factors play into the team’s performance this season, including the rebuilding of the football program.
The start of the season brought in an entirely new coaching staff. The only returning coaches were running backs coach John Flores, wide receivers coach Kobe Martin and cornerbacks coach Ken Irving.
That begs the question: Do our current standings reflect the coaching staff, or is it the players?
One player’s season stats speak for themselves. Starting quarterback Jacob T. Jones has served as the primary signal-caller and leading rusher for the Rangers this season. For passing, Jones has 158 completions on 253 attempts for 1,670 yards and 13 touchdowns. For rushing, he has 405 yards on the ground with six touchdowns.
Although Jones has put up strong individual numbers, the Rangers’ struggle extends beyond any one player. Jones said the season has been a learning experience for both the players and the new coaching staff.
“This is a rebuild,” said quarterback Jacob T. Jones. “Learning how to coach your players, learning how to play for your coaches. It’s a lot, especially out here in Alva, being below a lot of other teams in the conference. The staff is coming from NAIA, D1, just learning how D2 works and how this conference works.”
The current head coach of the Rangers football team, Jerry Partridge, has been coaching since 1986, when he served as a graduate assistant for the University of Missouri. He later became the head coach at Missouri Western State University, where he led the program to a 149-83 record during his tenure from 1997 to 2016.
With a coaching staff that brings decades of experience, the question remains: What is making it so difficult for us to get a win this season?
Coach Irving highlighted the difference between football and other sports when it comes to scoring and gameplay.
“For instance, with volleyball, they’ll play three different sets so it’s like, they have three times to beat a team once,” Irving said. “In basketball, you have two times to beat a team once. You play thirty games. With soccer, there’s 20-something. So, you have more chances. With football, you look at the end-all-be-all score.”
With fewer chances to make up for a loss, football teams are often judged by the game’s final score rather than the progress players have made throughout the season. Irving pointed out that this has its effects.
“Sometimes they look at the guys like zoo animals and look at them as lesser when that’s not the case,” Irving said. “If we were a sport that played 30 games and we sat here and won 7 of them, it’s not as obvious.”
While the record may not show it, the coaching staff continues to recognize the progress the players and the program have made throughout the season.
“You look at the wins and losses and it looks like they didn’t do anything good but if you just look at their progression throughout the whole year, you know, I keep telling them that for overall development and progression, the wins and losses aren’t going to show that,” Irving said.
One thing that I was primarily interested in was how the coaching staff manages to hold the team accountable for its losses this season while maintaining the players’ confidence. How does the team continue to prepare for its first win?
“Not going away from what you are supposed to do,” Irving said. “Holding your standard, even if you’re not winning, you’re still trying to hold your standard.”
Well, what exactly is the Ranger standard? While they couldn’t exactly say, Irving did say that what has been seen this season, is most certainly not it.
“This season has to be an anomaly.” Irving said.
While that is all we can hope for, Northwestern has yet to have a winning season since joining the NCAA Division II and the Great American Conference. The last winning season the NWOSU football program saw was in 2010, when it finished with an 8-3 overall record.
Despite being the only team in the conference without a win, the Rangers continue to look ahead. As the season comes to an end, Jones said only one word can describe how he is feeling.
“Hungry,” Jones said.
Hungry, starving even, is the only thing to be when the final game is a rivalry matchup against the Southwestern Oklahoma State University Bulldogs.
The final game of this season will be played in Weatherford, Okla., at the Milam Stadium.