Homecoming has arrived. All the fanfare and festivities will boil down to tonight’s showdown pitting one of the most high powered offenses in the WAC against a resilient Panther team that is coming off a 2-1, three-game road swing.

Dodge City, 2-2 overall and 1-0 in the WAC following last week’s 69-0 blowout conference opening win against Liberal, comes to Memorial Stadium tonight boasting a 2001-yard season stacking.

The Demons love to pass shouldering 986 yards through the air primarily between the tandem of quarterback Caden Walters and his No. 1 target Dayton McGroarty. McGroarty leads the WAC in receiving with 401 yards and just a yard ahead of Great Bend’s Bryce Lytle.

For the Panthers last Friday’s 23-12 win over a highly penalized Wichita North team was a needed shot in the arm following a 42-28 loss to unbeaten Garden City two weeks ago.

“Last Friday wasn’t very pretty,” said coach Tony Crough. “The weather obviously made it for a tough night but we’re proud of the kids for overcoming those lengthy lightning delays and coming out and fighting in the second half.”

The game was called with 4:48 left in the final period due to several lightning delays. The victory improved the Panthers to 3-1 on the season. Great Bend enters tonight’s bout with the Demons with a 1-1 record in the WAC.

The Redskins were penalized multiple times throughout the rain-soaked contest which only added to the time factor as the game was called between 10:15 and 10:30 that evening.

“You can never really prepare for a team that has over 200 yards in penalties on you,” said Crough. “We knew they were a highly penalized team going into the contest. It just helped us with field position and ball control. But we really didn’t take enough advantage of those penalties like we should have because we didn’t score enough points that would be indicative of those penalties. We ran around 80 offensive plays and the point output was not where we wanted it.”

The decision to call off the game was a mutual agreement between the athletic directors from both teams.

“Obviously at halftime nobody wanted to cancel,” said Crough. “As the delays became more and more prolonged in the fourth quarter the decision was finally made to call the game off.”

Continual improvement is something Crough says the team focuses on an everyday basis.

“We just work on getting better in every aspect,” said Crough. “We didn’t execute very well last week. We faced a brand new defense with Wichita North and it took us a while to adjust. We’re just honing in on Dodge City right now and trying to find ways to slow their high powered offense.”

Crough said injuries have been kept at bay but some minor illnesses have crept their way into the locker room.

“We’re ok,” said Crough. “We still have two of our offensive linemen out from last week as we wait for the concussion protocol to run its course. Other than that we’ve had some sickness running its way around the team but I think we’re on the downhill side with that.”

Back to Dodge City Crough said taking away their offensive momentum is key.

“We have to find a way to stop them,” he said. “This is probably the best offensive team we’ve prepared for at least since I’ve been at Great Bend. I’ve seen very few teams that execute as well as this offense we’ll face against Dodge City. They average over 500 yards per game so we have to find ways to stop them and take away the ball. Offensively we have to get some good sustained drives to keep their offense off the field.”