By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
After wallowing through three-straight winless seasons, the Abilene Cowboys have arrived on the 4A scene in style and will head into the home stretch of the 2022 season with a confident 3-2 record.
“The best thing we’ve seen in these first five weeks is how hard our guys play,” Abilene head coach Brad Nicks said. We’re starting to understand the level of effort we have to put in to win football games and learning to play for each other. We’re still working to turn this thing around but I’ve been impressed so far.”
The Cowboy’s 14-7 win over Marysville to start the season was their first in over 1,400 days and Abilene had no interest in stopping there, putting Concordia to the sword in a 27-8 victory the following week.
Junior quarterback Stocton Timbrook has taken a leap forward this season, completing 65% of his passes for over 1,100 yards and ten touchdowns, significantly cutting down his turnover numbers with just three picks surrendered in five games.
The Cowboy receiving corps has had a chance to show off its depth as well with five different pass catchers over 100 yards receiving and five different targets hauling in a touchdown catch already.
At just over 200 air yards per game, Abilene boasts the sixth-best passing offense in their class.
“Offensively we want to continue to do what we do,” Nicks said. “We need to eliminate some mistakes and mental errors but when we’ve cleaned those things up we’ve been really successful. Our O-Line has done a great job of giving us running lanes and giving Stocton time to get the ball to our playmakers.”
While the offense firing on all cylinders has been impressive, the defensive effort has been the biggest surprise for Abilene this season.
After allowing almost 45 points per game in 2021, the Cowboy defense is one of just 14 in Class 4A holding opponents to under 20 points each week this year.
As Abilene rights the ship and learns what it takes to compete on Friday nights, the energy in practice has been kicked up a notch as well, something Coach Nicks hopes will continue as the season goes on.
“I think the next piece for us is understanding how hard we have to work in practice to always be where we want to be come Friday night,” he said. “Our practices have been good but we could still be more consistent.”
With three big district games still ahead, the Cowboys will need to take things one game at a time while still remaining focused on their grander ambitions.
“We’re staying true to one of our biggest goals for the season and that’s to play week nine at home,” Nicks said. “We’re 3-2 right now and I think it’ll take four, maybe five wins to get there so we’ve got more work to do but we believe we can do that. Abilene football hasn’t played in the month of November in a while and that’s what we want to do.”
The Cowboys will be back in action on Friday night when they travel to Towanda-Circle (4-1) before closing out their season with Augusta (1-4) and Wamego (5-0).
For continuing coverage of Abilene football in 2022 stay tuned to the Salina Post.