Teams look for important wins Friday

Conference titles drive local teams

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- The sixth week of high school football in New Ulm sees all three local football teams coming off of wins last week.

Both New Ulm High School and Cathedral High School are home at Johnson Field Friday and Saturday nights respectively while Minnesota Valley Lutheran travels to Lake Crystal to tangle with Lake Crystal-Wellcome Memorial. All games are at 7 p.m.

NEW ULM CATHEDRAL

THE SKINNY: "Their most recent game against MLBO, they really spread the field a lot and did a lot of throwing," Cathedral coach Denny Lux said. He expects different formations from BLH as they can also run. They are a team looking for different ways to score. "We need to be ready for anything on defense," said Lux. "I think that they will do a lot of throwing against us with Jon DeRock at quarterback and some good receivers. But we want to stop the run first."

On defense, the Mustangs will use a 4-4 defense "which we see in every other game. They can use a 5-3 so we need to be alert for both defenses," Lux said.

KEYS TO THE GAME: "Our special team play will be important -- getting ourselves good field position offensively and make them go along ways on offense," Lux said. "Special teams will be a big part of it. Size-wise and speed-wise, we match up well."

Lux said that they need to win to be in contention for the Tomahawk Conference title, as well as for section seedings. "It looks like we have five really good football teams, and it will be a battle to see who gets the top seeds and the home games in playoffs," Lux said.

NEW ULM HIGH SCHOOL

THE SKINNY: Plain and simple, if the Eagles win this game and then add wins at Blue Earth and St. Peter, they will claim the 2003 South Central Conference title outright.

According to Eagle coach Rick VanRoekel, Fairmont is young and improving every game. "They have five or six sophomores starting and they are cutting down on their mistakes as the year progresses," he said. "They are not a Fairmont-type team of seven or eight years ago but they are getting better. Their tailback and fullback switch back and forth -- the tailback is a sophomore, their slotback is also a sophomore. Their five offensive linemen are all seniors."

KEYS TO THE GAME: VanRoekel looks for his team to play a full game like they did in the first and fourth quarters last week at Waseca, which was a 28-7 win for New Ulm. "We just concentrate on what we are doing -- we got some excellent blocking from our offensive linemen. If we can continue that and get the passing the ball better we will be fine."

VanRoekel feels that his team is playing well both on offense and defense. In the past two South Central Conference games, the Eagles gave up seven points, and they have scored 41 and 28 points in those games for a 69-7 advantage.

"This is a tough week coming off a big game and now our Homecoming," VanRoekel said. "We need to be ready to play like we were last week."

MINNESOTA VALLEY LUTHERAN

THE SKINNY: LCWM will resemble Maple River with their offensive sets. "They will run a lot of different formations -- they will run four or five wide receivers on a formation," Charger coach Jim Buboltz said. "It is more spread out than Maple River. On defense, they will show four, five, six and even seven man fronts -- they like to shoot gaps and blitz so we will need to try to take advantage of that.

"Anytime that a team spreads you out like that your kids need to be true to their duties," he said. Buboltz added that they have a quarterback that throws the ball well a couple running backs that are good.

KEYS TO THE GAME: Buboltz says that they cannot give LCWM any extra scoring opportunities. "We did not turn the ball over against Madelia-Truman. That was the first time this year that that happened," he said. "We need to take care of the ball and cut down on our penalties -- we had way too many penalties last week (13 for 132 yards). We need to take control of the game right away."