The Ferris foot­ball team closed out the spring with the annual Crimson & Gold Spring Game on Friday.

The Crimson team was made up of the first team offense and the sec­ond team defense. They squared off against the Gold team, which con­sisted of the sec­ond team offense and first team defense.

During three quar­ters of play, the Crimson team topped the Gold by a score of 26–12. The game was called short in order to pre­vent the chance of injuries.

The game show­cased the progress the team has made thus far in learn­ing the new offense instilled by first-year offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Chris Boden, who was hired in March. Ferris head coach Jeff Pierce felt his team had some ups and downs, which is to be expected this early in the year.

“It wasn’t a well-oiled machine, but we made some good progress over the course of the spring and feel good about where we’re headed,” said Pierce.

Senior full­back Leon Curry scored the first touch­down of the game as he ran off tackle and rum­bled into the end zone for a 22-yard score. That ended up being the first of sev­eral big plays on the day. Junior receiver Damien Miller returned a kick­off 95 yards for a score and red­shirt fresh­man run­ning back Tyler Thomas wrapped up the scor­ing as he sprinted 77 yards for a touchdown.

“We have good team speed and we can make things hap­pen,” said Pierce. “We just need to fine-tune so we start mak­ing those plays more consistently.”

Many mem­bers of the foot­ball team will con­tinue to work hard dur­ing the off­sea­son as 40 play­ers have com­mit­ted to stay­ing in Big Rapids over the sum­mer. The Bulldogs will start fall camp in early August as the team pre­pares to put a dis­ap­point­ing sea­son behind them.

“We have all the pieces we need to get bet­ter,” said Curry.

Curry and the rest of the Bulldogs will look to put all those pieces together as they kick off the sea­son on Sept. 3 at Hillsdale.