With the Highway 62 Traveling Trophy at stake, the Prague Red Devils and Meeker Bulldogs battled it out at Bulldog Stadium last Friday night with the Red Devils defeating Meeker 53-21.
The contest was much closer than the final score indicated as the Red Devils gained their second district win and remained undefeated at 5-0 on the season.
The trophy is sponsored by Anthony’s Foods with stores in both Meeker and Prague.
This is the second year for competition of the trophy which began in 2019, but the teams couldn’t play a year ago due to COVID-19.
Prague Head Coach Mike Hedge said following the game, “I thought we played really sloppy, but we played hard. Meeker came out and did a good job. They played well,” he thought.
“We had some offense we could throw at them and we shut them out in the second half. That’s what we told our kids at halftime we wanted to do and they responded.”
Maverick Lane, who is in his first year as Meeker’s head coach, said after the game, “That’s the most consistent we’ve played. I’m extremely proud of the effort our kids gave tonight,” Lane noted.
“We’re young, we only have three seniors on the team. We start several freshmen and sophomores. I don’t think they were expecting us to play like we did.”
Hedge is a former Meeker head coach and also served as high school principal and athletic director before taking the Prague job.
Meeker scored first, taking a 7-0 lead within the first two minutes of the opening period. Prague answered with its own touchdown and after adding the two-point conversion went ahead 8-7.
Meeker scored again with 8:01 remaining in the first quarter, going ahead 14-8. The Red Devils responded again less than three minutes later and regained the lead, 16-14.
Prague never trailed again. It increased its lead to 24-14 before the period ended.
However, Meeker pulled within three points, scoring with 8:25 to go in the second quarter, to make it 24-21.
But that was as close as the Bulldogs could manage to get the rest of the way.
The Red Devils tacked on another touchdown just two seconds before intermission.
Though they threatened several times in the final half, Meeker was unable to score. Prague pulled way with consistent long runs.
The Red Devils gained more than 500 yards on the ground.
Meeker visits Millwood on Friday night while Prague hosts Kellyville.