The Joseph Eagle gridiron squad played its third game of the season at Prairie City Burnt River Sept. 15, walking away with a 46-0 shellacking of the Panthers.

Eagles coach Toby Koehn, while enjoying the team’s win, said that Prairie City was rebuilding its program and turned in a decent performance considering.

The Eagles led 40-0 after the first quarter, at which point the team’s varsity starters were pulled, which allowed younger players to garner much-needed real-game experience. For those reasons Koehn said he didn’t keep game stats.

Another contributing factor in playing younger players was the Panthers’ 102-0 defeat by Pine Eagle the previous week.

“We didn’t want to do that,” Koehn said.

The coach did point out the excellent performance by the younger players. He noted the defensive performance of sophomore Justice McQuown and the offensive ball-carrying of Juston Rodgers.

“They all played well. They learned a lot after being out on the field for three quarters,” he said.

The Eagles are 2-1 on the season with their first league game coming up against Wallowa Friday.

The Enterprise Outlaws turned in a respectable performance in their first game of the year against Umatilla, coming out on the bottom end of a 30-18 score. However, new coach Rusty Eschler saw a number of positives in the defeat, particularly after being down 24-0 at the half.

“We told our kids that we won the second half 18-6,” Eschler said. “We gave up a couple of big plays in the first half, or the score would have been much closer.”

Eschler also noted that the Outlaws played the game as eight-man football because of a lack of experience with its players.

“We only dressed down 16 for the game, and we started Trace Evans, a freshman, on defense,” he said.

The coach said that Trent Walker turned in a sparkling performance on both offense and defense and said the team’s freshmen performed well considering their lack of experience and playing against juniors and seniors.

The Outlaws are 0-1 on the season, and their next game is a non-league contest slated for Friday, Sept. 22, at Imbler.