Mustangs Fall against Rams, Will Face Glasgow Friday

The Malta Mustangs football team fell 34-20 to the Missoula Loyola Rams last Saturday, September 16, in a neutral field game held in Fairfield.

Malta will look to flip the script this Friday, September 22, as they travel to Glasgow to face the 0-4 Scotties who are in a similar situation with Malta; fighting the injury bug. Despite their record, Malta Head Coach Nick Oxarart will not take the Scotties lightly.

"Glasgow is a solid football team that has had a tough non-conference schedule," Coach Oxarart said. "Their record does not indicate how good they are. They are a balanced run and pass team. They have a big offensive and defensive line. They have a lot of solid athletes around their big guys as well. Coach Pat Barnett and his staff will have a good game plan against us and we are going to need to be mistake-free if we expect to have any chance of leaving Glasgow with a victory."

Malta is now 1-3 this season after facing tough competition in the first half of the 2023 season, but Coach Oxarart feels that the Mustangs continue to improve in all aspects of the game.

"We are starting to find a nice balance of run and pass," he said. "We are starting to believe in ourselves and that takes time with all the new faces that have had to step up and replace starters that we have been missing. We had over 400 yards of offense, so we were able to have some success against them. We had a couple of costly turnovers and penalties that kept a couple of touchdowns off the scoreboard. If we limit those mistakes then we are able to control the game a little bit more and maybe the game turns out differently. Good teams will force you into mistakes and Loyola is a good football team."

Coach Oxarart also knows that facing teams like Missoula Loyola and Jefferson has been beneficial.

"Playing a bunch of top-ranked teams has helped us find our weaknesses and hopefully we have fixed some of the mistakes we have been making," Coach Oxarart said. "At times, we have been able to have some success against these tough teams and we need to be able to build off of that. Our players have battled through a lot of adversity up to this point in the season and hopefully, that has prepared us to face a very tough conference opponent."

In their loss to Missoula-Loyola, Malta was led by junior quarterback Stockton Oxarart who was 19-of-32 for 261 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception. Malta had a total of 402 yards offensively.

Sophomore Dawson Hammond had eight catches for 153 yards and three touchdowns. Blaine Downing had 106 yards on 22 rushing attempts and one catch for 18 yards.

Treyton Wilke had five catches for 76 yards and 21 yards rushing on 15 attempts. Trooper Stiles had three catches for 21 yards and one rush for 15 yards. Duke Williamson had two rushes for 11 yards and one catch for 13 yards. Sebastian Best had one catch for five yards.

Scoring Summary:

Qtr 1: Ethan Stack 56 yard pass from Aiden Round (Malik Lyttle kick) 10:37 0-7

Talen Reynolds 37 yard run (Lyttle kick) 7:06 0-14

Lyttle 36 yard pass from Jack Clevenger (Lyttle kick) 0:35 0-21

Qtr 2: Taylor Jones 32 yard pass from Round (kick failed) 3:46 0-27

Qtr 3: Dawson Hammond 24 yard pass from Stockton Oxarart (Landon Retan kick) 3:16 7-27

Qtr 4: Clevenger 6 yard pass from Round (Remington Howard kick) 11:13 7-34

Hammond 7 yard pass from Oxarart (kick blocked) 1:58 13-34

Hammond 56 yard pass from Oxarart (Retan kick) 0:51 20-34