Few questions answered at Hawks’ scrimmage

• Jay Grosz

Press Photo by Dustin Monke Dickinson State senior linebacker Jay Grosz wraps up junior running back Myren Moore on Wednesday night during the Blue Hawk football team’s Blue-Gray Scrimmage at the Badlands Activities Center.

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The first-team offense was only on the field for 10 plays, no running back stood out among the pack, there were no touchdowns and two missed field goals.

All in all, it was a successful Blue-Gray Scrimmage scrimmage for the Dickinson State football team Wednesday night at the Badlands Activities Center.

“There’s some things we need to work on still,” DSU senior running back Presley Straub said. “Things we got right, things we got wrong and things we still need to make better.”

Success, at this time of the year, DSU head coach Hank Biesiot said, is figuring out the little things.

The Blue Hawks did that, he said, seeing what they are doing wrong and which players are beginning to take command of certain positions.

“I thought, defensively, we played pretty good position defense and came up and hit,” Biesiot said. “We made a few mistakes, but those are younger guys.”

The coach begins his 37th season at DSU when the Blue Hawks host new Frontier Conference opponent Rocky Mountain College at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 1 at the BAC.

Over all those years, Bieisot has had some tough decisions to make.

This year’s biggest challenge is figuring out what to do at tailback. It’s the only offensive position that doesn’t have a starter returning.

Straub and junior Myren Moore, who are expected to shoulder the bulk of the carries — at least early in the year — shared time with freshmen Zach Sandau and Terrance Yelder. Fullbacks Kyle Stanton, a sophomore returning starter, and freshman Kurt Aiken each had a couple carries.

Riley Moore, a sophomore who was expected to start the opener, is out with a left knee injury. He said he has not had the knee evaluated and doesn’t know how long he will be out.

Biesiot said he was impressed with the performance of the tailbacks — Straub and Moore each had a handful of solid first-down carries — as well as the fullbacks.

“We’ve been looking at them all week,” Biesiot said. “This is a chance for them to get going and kind of measure themselves too.”

Straub said he would have liked to have had a few more reps, but understands that coaches are doing what they can to get a look at everyone vying for the spot.

“Coach doesn’t make a decision — or if he does, he doesn’t tell us — until game day,” Straub said. “It’s all up in the air, to us, as to who is going to be back there yet.”

The team only ran 50 plays and scrimmaged for just under an hour as more than 10 players — some of them key contributors — sat out with injuries.

“We intentionally cut back the number of plays, so nobody really got quite the sweat that they normally get in a scrimmage,” Biesiot said. “But I think that’s the way the situation was, that’s the way to do it.”

Senior left guard Kyle Enebo and senior free safety Nolan Schwartz sat out with sore hamstrings, though both of the starters are expected to be ready for Rocky Mountain.

Junior defensive end Cord Berg has been practicing but was kept out as a precaution as he continues to recover an ACL tear suffered midway through last season.

“We’d like to have those guys back,” Fisher said of Schwartz, Berg and the five other defensive players who missed the scrimmage with minor injuries. “They’re our returners. They’re a big part of our defense. But we’ve got some young guys who are stepping up and playing real well.”

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