{"id":89090,"date":"2025-09-08T10:13:37","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T15:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=89090"},"modified":"2025-09-08T10:13:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T15:13:38","slug":"broncos-edge-tmp-in-season-opening-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=89090","title":{"rendered":"Broncos edge TMP in season-opening thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By KYLER ROWDEN-STUM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Russell Broncos kicked off their 2025 season with a hard-fought 29-22 road win over rival TMP-Marian on Thursday night at Lewis Field Stadium in Hays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Russell leaned on a balanced attack and senior leadership to hold off the Monarchs in a back-and-forth matchup.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quarterback Trey Zorn threw for three touchdowns. His 12-yard strike to Walker Middleton with just over five minutes left proved to be the game-winner, while running back Kolton Jones rushed for 131 yards on 13 carries to keep drives alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TMP struck early with quarterback Carson Liles connecting on a 49-yard touchdown pass to Jackson Gillespie, and Liles finished with 188 passing yards and two scores.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But four TMP turnovers \u2014 three interceptions and a fumble \u2014 swung momentum in Russell\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both teams struggled with penalties, something Russell head coach Cole Greenwood\u2019s team was able to overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe got way more penalties than they did,\u201d he said. \u201cHonestly, we shouldn\u2019t have won that game with the amount of penalties we had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Senior Dominick Hernandez, a wide receiver, defensive back and one of the team\u2019s leaders, said the victory carried extra meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt feels so amazing. TMP has been a rival for so long. \u2026 I\u2019m so proud of this team we have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hernandez backed up his words with his performance, catching multiple passes and making several tackles in the secondary to help Russell hold off late TMP surges.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greenwood said the versatility of his team offensively aided in the victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf you watch this film, you can\u2019t just sit back in coverage of us anymore. We can beat you in a multitude of ways,\u201d Greenwood said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the victory, Russell improves to 1-0 and heads to Oakley next week. TMP falls to 0-1 and will look to regroup on the road at Norton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>This story was written as part of INF 322: Sports Writing, a course in the Department of Informatics at Fort Hays State University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By KYLER ROWDEN-STUM Tiger Media Network The Russell Broncos kicked off their 2025 season with a hard-fought 29-22 road win over rival TMP-Marian on Thursday&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7349],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Russell-Bronco.png?fit=1506%2C1506","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89092,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89090\/revisions\/89092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/89091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}