High School Football Previews: Garden City Buffaloes

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – The Garden City Buffaloes are gearing up for the 2024 football season. They played in a jamboree at Wichita Heights ahead of week one.

The Buffaloes finished 2023 with a 5-4 record before falling to Free State in the playoffs. Head coach Brian Hill says the team has shown lots of improvement since the start of the summer.

Their goal this year is to take things one game at a time. Their first focus is on their opponent, Manhattan, in week one.

While Garden City lost a handful of graduates, they’ve worked to fill in the gaps.

“The biggest place we took a big hit was on the offensive line,” said Hill. “We lost four of our five starters. So incorporating some of the new guys in there has been, you know, what we’ve been trying to get over the hump with.”

Many returning players are now bringing their experience to help guide the team to success. They know what it’s going to take to find yet another winning season.

“It’s now their time to step up and play. With all the, you know, tough games that we play early in the season, that they’ve played some varsity football games. It’s going to be very important that they know how to handle some success and they also know how to handle the failure,” added Hill.

The players say senior leadership has been strong all summer with good attendance for practice. The guys are putting in the work to continue improving.

“Overall goal is just to make a playoff run, start off strong, do that at the beginning of the season and just keep the ball rolling. One thing that we’re doing very well in practice is our communication. We’re really good at talking to each other, figuring out the problem and working to overcome it,” said senior defensive and offensive lineman David Holguin.

“I feel like we’re doing great or doing a great job at communicating. Sometimes things, like I said, they get too fast, which starts off down, and things go smoothly once we execute,” said Buffs senior quarterback Ethan Gomez.

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