DICKINSON, N.D. (newsdakota.com) – The Jamestown Blue Jays football team began the year with a 28-21 win in Dickinson Friday night.
Limited practices, no scrimmages and no non-conference games meant nothing to the Jays offense to start the ballgame. Their first drive of the season spanned 65 yards was capped off by a 15 yard touchdown scramble from quarterback Ty Monson. The Jays offensive unit was off and running while the defense provided some big stops in the opening half.
Dickinson moved the ball effectively but struggled to finish drives. Two times in the opening half Dickinson’s drives stalled inside the Jamestown 20 yard line. One of those drive killers came via a Joel Bowman interception. Bowman undercut a route and snatched the first forced turnover of the year.
The interception set the Jays offense up at their own one yard line, but they didn’t wait long to get out of the shadow of their own endzone. A 52 yard run from Austin Kessler brought the Jays to the other side of the 50 with one play. Later in the drive a Ty Monson pass was tipped by a defender and landed perfectly into the hands of Preston Kroeber on the way to a 36 yard touchdown reception.
Jamestown opened up a 14-0 lead and was looking at a 21-0 lead after the Jays second interception of the opening half. On the next drive, Paris Ndikum undercut a Landon Aman pass to set Jamestown up deep in Dickinson territory.
Nothing came of the drive though as center Thomas Allman airmailed the snap over Monson’s leading to a Dickinson fumble recovery and a Dickinson touchdown on their next drive.
The two teams alternated scoring drives in the second half. Jamestown stretched the lead to 21-7 on a run-heavy drive. Kessler finished off the drive with a two yard touchdown run following lineman turned fullback, for a hand full of plays, Matt Anderson.
Dickinson kept the pressure on as they scored twice in the final quarter. A touchdown run from Troy Berg made it 21-14, Jamestown answered with a beauty of a pass from Monson to Adam Kallenbach to make it 28-14 and then Aman scrambled to pay dirt to make it 28-21
With a couple minutes left in the ballgame, Jamestown drained the clock with a pair of first downs and walked away 1-0.
Next Friday the Jays travel to Minot to play the Magicians (0-1).