It was a victory of sorts for the undaunted Plains Horsemen.

Coach Mike Tatum and his determined but severely undermanned Horsemen, competing with only ten players in Plains Friday due to injuries, played hard but fell 52-0 to the powerful visiting Superior Bobcats in Western B-C 8-Man football action.

Ironically, the 52 points Superior posted represented the unbeaten Bobcats’ lowest offensive output of their high-output season. It was by any measure, a win of some kind for Tatum and his hard-fighting Horsemen.

“One of my freshmen noticed that 52 was a low for Superior this year,” Tatum said adding. “Some of that could be from our defense.”

Tatum pointed to the strong sideline-to-sideline play of Matthew Thurston and Greg Tatum as key to the Horsemen’s defense, also praising freshman Levi Sturdivant, Gary Rehbein, and brothers Eddie and Jeff Siebert for their efforts.

Highlighting the game for the Horsemen, Tatum said Sturdivant recorded a quarterback sack, Rehbein pulled down five tackles and secured the edge from his defensive end position and the Siebert brothers both produced turnovers for Plains, Eddie on a fumble recovery and Jeff on a pass interception

Tatum said Jeff Siebert led Montana 8-Man football in interceptions going into last week’s play with eight, and now has nine.

Coach Tatum says he has never questioned his young team’s resolve, and is impressed with how the Horsemen keep showing up for work every day in spite of the daunting odds facing the team right now.

“The one thing we ask of these guys is to play hard the whole game, and again, they did just that,” he said. “Not an easy thing when we're down to 10 players because of the injury bug.”

Now 0-7, the Horsemen go to 6-1 St Regis for a rare Thursday night game this week.