Week 5 could be be pivotal for teams

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- The fifth week of the season for the high school football teams in New Ulm could well be entitled "Make a Move Week."

All three schools have big contests this week in conference play, and those contests could make or break a team's conference contention or title hopes in their matchups tonight.

Cathedral will host Sleepy Eye St. Mary's while both Minnesota Valley Lutheran and New Ulm High School will face road challenges at Sleepy Eye Public and St. Peter respectively.

MINNESOTA VALLEY LUTHERAN (2-2, 0-1) AT SLEEPY EYE PUBLIC (3-1, 1-0), 7 P.M., SLEEPY EYE

This matchup in the Big School Division of the Southern Minnesota Football Conference will see the return of Charger quarterback Dan Unke to the MVL lineup as their signal caller after breaking a bone in his foot the first game of the year.

"Watching the films of (Sleepy Eye), they look fairly quick and have good speed," commented Charger head coach Jim Buboltz. "They have a quarterback in Bryce Belseth who has some speed and will run the option very well. Plus, we will have to key on Cody Walter; he is also quick. They like to do a lot of countering and will run some power football.

"They also have some good size and two of the better linebackers in our conference in Marty Hoffmann and Isak Rasmus. They can play the game."

Buboltz said that the Indians "have the most flat-out team speed that we have seen. Springfield had more power, but Sleepy Eye has more speed and they can also use power football when they want to."

He said that the Indians' speed "is more of a concern than the power game because it is harder to defend speed, and I am very concerned with that. We need to be able to protect that outside. It is almost as if you have to defend from the tackle out in a sense instead of from the tackles in."

The Indian speed has made Buboltz look at several different lineups on defense. "We have looked at Danny Liggett even possibly playing some free safety to roam from side(line) to side(line). He does have our best speed on the team. He is a very good tackler and is not afraid to stick his head in there."

And it may be a little harder for the Charger defense as Joel Russow, who sprained an MCL in his knee, will not be playing today. His status is up in the air for next week. "Danny Bendix (who separated a shoulder in the Springfield game) will be back; the soreness is gone and he has worked out this week."

The MVL offense, which will be bolstered by Unke's return, will face an Indian defense that shows "a 4-4 defensive front and they will also bring some six-man fronts on short-yardage downs; they have those great linebackers in the middle."

Unke's return will "open up some things offensively for us. He looks to be back 100 percent."

Jon Enter, who had quarterbacked the team when Unke was hurt, will move to tight end.

An back injury to Chris Orth, the Chargers' 290-pound lineman, has forced Buboltz to move Sam Hunter (175 pounds) to right tackle. Hunter was MVL's back-up fullback.

"Chris has had some chronic back problems for a couple of games. He has tried to play through the pain, but just could not do it. Sam is probably our second-best blocker next to Jon Beilke."

SLEEPY EYE ST. MARY'S (2-2, 0-1) AT NEW ULM CATHEDRAL (3-1, 1-0), 7 P.M., JOHNSON PARK

This small-school division matchup in the Southern Minnesota Football Conference matches two arch-rivals in a meeting at Johnson Park.

The Hounds are fresh off a 30-8 win over Buffalo Lake-Hector while the Knights are trying to rebound from a tough 28-21 loss to top-ranked McLeod West last week.

"St. Mary's has some pretty good skills," said Cathedral head coach Denny Lux, who is a graduate of Sleepy Eye St. Mary's. "They have a good quarterback in Andy Konz and two good receivers in David Haala and Chad Armbruster. Their running backs (a pair of juniors) are Brian Gangelhoff and Nick Novotny; they have some good skill guys on offense."

The Knights play a typical St. Mary's defense "that is aggressive to the ball. But we see some things that we feel that our kids can do to counter their specialty guys on offense and slow down their defense."

Matching up well both in size and speed, Lux feels that this "will be a real good football game. It means a lot to both teams as far as conference and later on sectional seedings. We expect it to be a real hard-hitting football game."

And hard-hitting is how Lux wants his players to be. "We need to come out and be physical. We have to set the tone and how the game is going to go with how hard we are going to hit. Secondly, we need to keep our offense on the field and keep the rhythm.

"They have been scoring some points and they have some threats when (Andy) Konz is in the pocket. He is a good accurate thrower so we want to keep him off the field as much as possible. That will be a matter of us doing some things and mixing some things up."

NEW ULM HIGH SCHOOL (2-2, 2-0) AT ST. PETER (3-1, 2-0), 7 P.M., ST. PETER

For the second straight week the Eagles face a big South Central Conference challenge, with this week's hill being a game at St. Peter with the winner claiming sole possession of first place in the SCC.

'They are a typical St. Peter team; they run the wishbone on offense and still use the radar defense," head coach Rick Van Roekel said. "They do break the wishbone and go with the slots with the broken bone and go with twin-receivers on both sides, but they still run out the base wishbone."

In the Saints' last two conference games, they have scored three and 14 points (against Waseca and Fairmont). "They have been nagged with injuries. They are still 3-1 without some of their players, their best running back has also been out the last two games and may be back for us (today). St. Peter is not the same team without him."

New Ulm boasts the biggest offensive and defensive lines in the SCC "but St. Peter is probably the second-biggest (in the conference). It will be a challenge for us because this will probably be the biggest line that we see this year."

St. Peter uses the radar defense which New Ulm, over the past years, has had success against.

"Early-on, we tried to give false reads and false steps and try to outfox them," commented Van Roekel, "but that never worked. So we just went back to our basic offense and have had good success against it."

Van Roekel said that the win over Blue Earth (28-14 last week) "was a big confidence builder, but St. Peter is just as good a team as Blue Earth. This is another big hurdle that we will be facing. It helped (the win Friday) because we had a lot of good people playing good football and we have had a good week of practice this week. I think that we are getting better each week but we still have room for improvement."

He also feels that the Saints' defense will key on Eagle running back Micah Neidecker who rushed for 270 yards on 21 carries (stats were revised this week) against the Bucs. "I would (key on him) and try to shut him down, but I think that if they do, Matt Schmidt (NUHS quarterback) may have a nice passing game.

"I expect and hope that our offensive and defensive lines keep on doing what they have been doing the past games. Matt has really come on and done a nice job for us this year."