CHEYENNE – When the final horn sounded Saturday at the Okie Blanchard Stadium, Southeast coach Mark Bullington was able to finally breathe a sigh of relief following his team’s 58-0 win over the Cheyenne East JV squad.
The victory snapped a 10-game losing streak, dating back to Oct. 20, 2017 when the Southeast Cyclones defeated the Niobrara County Tigers, 34-20.
“Finally,” Bullington said. “We still aren’t clicking yet. We have to get excited. That’s hard to bring from the outside. It’s got to come from the inside. We have to get excited about playing football. This will definitely help with that.”
Things started a little shaky for the Cyclones who fumbled on the second play of the team’s first offensive possession.
However, as quickly as Southeast gave the ball to East, the Cyclones regained the possession of the ball with a fumble recovery of their own.
A minute later, quarterback Hayden Anderson cracked the end zone on a 6-yard keeper to give Southeast an early 7-0 lead.
From there, the rout was on.
The Cyclone defense got stop after stop, forcing punts, forcing five turnovers, recording sacks, allowing one first down and blocking a punt for a safety.
“We are finally starting to go after people,” Bullington said. “We’ve let people attack us instead of us attacking them.”
The Southeast defense held Cheyenne East to -21 yards of total offense.
On the other side of the ball, sophomore running back Ryan Clapper picked up extra carries in the absence of Cord Herring. Clapper tallied two rushing touchdowns, a 65-yard kick return following the safety in the third quarter and five point-after-touchdowns.
“Ryan did a great job,” Bullington said.
Clapper totaled 120 yards on 17 carries.
Bullington added they have to get the running game going to jump start the passing game.
“We spent all week trying to get the running game going,” he said. “We have to fix the running game before the passing game will ever go. That will be our focus this week.”
Southeast’s big quarter came in the third when they racked up 30 of the 58 points.
Heading to the final quarter, the Cyclones held a 51-0 lead, kicking in the running clock for the final 12 minutes of the game.
Southeast (1-1) opens conference play this week when they travel to Pine Bluffs on Friday, Sept. 20 for a 7 p.m. contest.
“We have Pine Bluffs coming up, and they are beatable. They got beat by Wright (Friday). We just have to go after them,” Bullington said.
