Pigskin Preview: North Platte

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (KNOP) -The North Platte Bulldogs are coming off of a playoff appearance in 2022 and they look to improve on that in 2023.

The team lost an eight man senior class in 2022, and bring an 11 man senior class into 2023 with a large number of underclassmen on the roster.

“We’ve had some pretty good players that we have lost,” said Head Coach Kurt Altig, “but last year we had some pretty good players that we lost and its one of those things, we come in nd we play Bulldog Football and we insert the next guy, we don’t run a super complex offense, so we run what we do perfect, and these guys have been doing it for four or five years now, so it’s a next man up mentality.”

The offense the Bulldogs run may not be complex, but it has been very effective in recent years, but Senior Landon O’Brien says he thinks this team’s strength is in the defense.

“Our run D is pretty solid, we play hard, and fly to the ball,” said O’Brien.

Conditioning is one of the strong suits of this North Platte team also, they are one of the smallest schools in Class A and see a lot of players taking snaps on both sides of the ball.

“We work our butt off every single practice,” said Senior Drake Ferris, “we don’t take a practice off and if we do we make up for it, other teams rely on rest, but work our butts off and like it.”

One thing is for sure though for this Bulldog team, the thrive off the energy in the crowd, and Senior Alex Gove says he wants to see the stands full for every home game.

“If we could get this whole town in the stands every night that would be amazing,” said Gove, “we have had boosted numbers in the past years with the success, if we could get bigger crowds here it would give us a lot more energy down on the field.”

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