It’s been an up and down season for the New London football team, and unfortunately for Lone Tree, the Tigers were mostly up on Friday during their 53-8 victory. 

A few mistakes and some bad breaks snowballed on the Lions, resulting in a 27-0 second quarter for New London. 

Junior running back Boden Pickle, who entered the game with just two catches all season, caught two touchdown passes and returned an interception for a touchdown in the quarter.

Lone Tree trailed just 7-0 early in the second quarter when a bad snap put the Tigers in second-and-32 from their own 8-yard line. But a blown coverage resulted in a 54-yard completion and Lone Tree never seemed to recover. 

Cade Patterson had a pair of big plays to put the Lions inside the 10-yard line twice. He returned the opening kickoff 66 yards to the Tiger 9-yard line, but the Lions were unable to get closer than the six. 

Cade Shield found Patterson for a 56-yard completion on Lone Tree’s first drive of the second half, but he was tackled at the 1-yard line. A penalty pushed the Lions back 15 yards and a fourth down pass was intercepted. 

Braden Viers recovered a fumble on the goal line to end a New London drive in the fourth quarter, but the Lions fumbled it back on the next play. Viers had another fumble recovery later in the fourth quarter. Each team had three lost fumbles for the game. 

“It was just kind of a strange game,” Lone Tree coach Aaron Bohr said. “New London — they’ve definitely had some ups and downs this year… We were hoping to maybe take advantage of them with some deep passes, but it seemed like it was always just off the tip of our fingers.

“It was tough here, they’re a very talented team. It seemed like we had a hard time with our footing with all the rain that we had. Our guys played hard and I love the effort but you know, it just wasn’t our night.”

Senior Will Kleckner had eight tackles in his final home game and Patterson led the defense with nine. Joe Boxwell had seven. 

Caden Smith recovered a fumble and returned it 38 yards for a touchdown to get Lone Tree on the scoreboard with 3:22 remaining. Shield found Drew Gauley in the endzone for the 2-point conversion. Shield finished 9-of-22 for 101 yards through the air. Patterson caught five passes for 92 yards. 

New London was ranked No. 7 after defeating Winfield Mt. Union 71-18 on September 10, but lost three games in a row after suffering some injuries. The Tigers dropped close games to the district leaders WACO and English Valleys, before a shocking 68-33 loss to Iowa Valley last week. 

The Tiger defense got a couple players back from injury and looked like a different unit in Lone Tree. 

“We just refocused,” New London coach Mark McSorley said. “We just feel like we kind of lost ourselves there. You know, we fell short in a couple of games and lost confidence. We regrouped a little bit and this past week was a good week of practice. So we’re just trying to finish strong — as strong as we can.”

Lone Tree (3-4) is also hoping for a good finish in district play, in Marengo on Friday. Iowa Valley (3-4) has won back-to-back district games after an 0-3 start. 

Iowa Valley quarterback Evan Kearney leads the district in passing touchdowns (16) and passing yards (1239), while Shield is third in the district in passing with 898 yards for the season.