Story by CAYDEN SANDERS Photos by CHLOE PELTON and DANIELA SALINAS
Tiger Media Network
With Division II football opening up its Week Zero schedule on Thursday, Fort Hays State welcomed last season’s Lone Star Conference Champion Angelo State Rams to Lewis Field Stadium to begin the year. The preseason No. 13 Rams avenged last season’s loss to the Tigers with a convincing 28-7 victory over the Tigers.
“Coach Girsch (Angelo State Head Coach) had his guys prepared tonight. I felt like I did not have our guys prepared well enough tonight,” FHSU Head Coach Chris Brown said. “We did not play physical, we did not play aggressive, we did not play with grit, and we did not play Tiger Football. We had a lot of new faces out there tonight. We did not have game experience out there, and it showed.”
FHSU (0-1) only had one score that came inside the two-minute timeout to end the first half. Junior quarterback Caleb Heavner threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to senior wide receiver Ethan Hilliman with 1:54 left in the half to cut ASU’s lead in half. The Rams (1-0) led 14-7 at halftime.
“They told me beforehand that the ball was coming to me, so in my head, I just said, ‘it’s time to make a play,’” Hilliman said. “It was time to spark and get the momentum going, you know? So when I saw the ball in the air, I just said, ‘It’s mine.’”
However, the Rams shut out the FHSU offense in the second half and limited the Tigers to just 268 yards of total offense.
“Honestly, we left a lot of plays out there, and I feel like we didn’t go as hard as we really could have. We didn’t really play as physical as we were supposed to,” Hilliman said. “But it’s a good thing about that, that we got 10 more opportunities to go back out there and give it our all, so we can’t really hang our heads on this one. We’ve just got to go back to the drawing board next week and just practice hard and just get to it, go and get that dub in Colorado.”
The Rams’ offense scored a touchdown in every quarter. Their first score of the game came on a pass from junior quarterback Braeden Fuller to senior wide receiver Zeek Freeman for a 60-yard touchdown pass with 8:20 left in the first quarter.
Angelo State continued to apply pressure with another score at the 10:57 mark in the second quarter. Fuller scrambled out of the pocket and found Corey Sandolph for a nine-yard touchdown pass to put ASU up 14-0.
“Angelo State’s pretty, pretty good team. [They are] No. 13, obviously, in the country, and they brought it today,” junior linebacker Gavin Meyers said. “They were fast, they were physical, and they just got the best of us. I think all around, we have a lot to improve on. We had good plays here and there, but just not enough to win a football game.”
In the third quarter, Angelo State used redshirt sophomore quarterback Kaeden Smith to connect with junior wide receiver Donny Bishop for a 32-yard touchdown pass. Inside the two-minute timeout in the fourth quarter, Fuller found Sandolph again for a 30-yard touchdown to make it 28-7 and close out the contest for the Rams.
“I thought we would actually start rolling in the second half. The team that we are, we tend to start slow and finish strong, but we did not finish strong tonight,” Brown said. “We have to take care of the ball better and then get some takeaways on the defensive side.”
Fort Hays rushed the ball 32 times for just 96 yards and gained 172 yards through the air. Hilliman led the team in receiving with five catches for 49 yards.
The Tigers were just 5-15 on third-down conversions. Last season, Fort Hays converted on 46% of its third downs. ASU was able to convert on over 50% of its third-down tries on Thursday on the way to 366 yards of total offense, a rebound from last season’s low 203 yards against FHSU. The Rams had 148 yards on the ground and 218 yards in the air.
Meyers led the Tigers’ defense with 10 tackles while junior defensive end Gaven Haselhorst earned a team-leading two sacks for negative nineteen yards.
FHSU will have another big game in one week’s time, as the Tigers travel to former RMAC rival No. 6 Colorado State-Pueblo on Thursday. The Thunderwolves went 9-0 in 2024 and are the reigning RMAC champions. CSU-Pueblo won its season opener 43-0 on the road at South Dakota Mines.
“We are going to watch a film tomorrow at 2:00, then split up in position meetings at 2:30, then go for a run to get the soreness away,” Brown said. “Saturday, they will be off, and we are back at it on Sunday to prepare for Pueblo.”