High school football runs into postseason

Eagles kick off sections Monday

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- The "second season" for high school football teams begins this week with the start of playoffs.

All three high school football teams in New Ulm will have first-round home games beginning Monday when the New Ulm Eagles, seeded third in Section 2-AAAA, host Marshall, seeded sixth, at Johnson Field in a 7 p.m. game.

Last year, Marshall ended the Eagles' football season in the playoffs 42-20 in Marshall.

This year, Marshall is 2-6 in the Southwest Conference.

"But they have lost come close games," Eagle coach Rick VanRoekel said. 'Their biggest downfall this year has been their turnovers -- that has plagued them most of the season."

The Tigers beat the Eagles last season due in large part to senior quarterback Ben Wiener. "With him being gone, that ended some of the threat of running and throwing the ball and putting pressure on the defenses," VanRoekel said. "But they still come out. And this is the thing that really concerns me, is that they come out in multiple sets. They can go trips to one side and then come back and run quad sets to another side. My biggest worry is that we may have a breakdown with pass coverage or we don't line up right."

VanRoekel said that the Tigers "can run out of an I-set but they love to go to the trip formations a lot -- they can go double twin sets and they like to throw. They will throw the ball as much as they run the ball."

Marshall also lost a lot of their speed with Wiener's graduation. "This year, they have a new quarterback -- they started out with a senior there, but they have a sophomore (Matt Koster) playing there now that really throws the ball well. So if we can contain their passing game and the right alignment, I think that we will be fine."

On defense "they do not blitz a lot -- it is a standard 4-3 defense. We have seen that three or four times so that will not be a problem for us," VanRoekel said.

New Ulm enters the playoffs coming off a big 46-13 win over St. Peter that gave the Eagles a share of the South Central Conference football title with Waseca.

"We had that stumble in the loss to Blue Earth, but we came off well against St. Peter," VanRoekel said. "Plus it was a game where everyone got to play and the whole team felt good. Going into the playoffs, I don't think that you could asked for anything better as far as the confidence of the team."

"The players on this year's team remember that loss last year to Marshall," VanRoekel said. "That should be more incentive for them."

The winner of the Marshall-New Ulm game will play Mankato East Saturday at 2 p.m. at East.

MADELIA-TRUMAN AT MINNESOTA VALLEY LUTHERAN, 4 P.M. TUESDAY, JOHNSON FIELD

For the second time this year, the Chargers will play Madelia-Truman. Earlier in the season, MVL downed the Blackhawks 22-7 in Madelia.

"They are a very tough team -- they will come out and play hard," said Charger coach Jim Buboltz about Madelia-Truman. "Their offensive line does a fine job of blocking and they play tough defense. They will take us to the task."

When the Chargers and the Blackhawks last met, Mike Hinz led the Madelia-Truman offense with 132 yards rushing. But he has been hurt and will not play on Wednesday. However Buboltz and the Chargers know that adversity can bring a team together.

"They have put things back in shape and they are coming off a nice win over Maple River and played GFW very tough," he said. "They have players on the team that are stepping up their game."

"But we need to worry about what we are doing," said Buboltz. "We need to continue executing well on offense and defense like we have been. Those are the things that get it done for us."

MVL is coming off of wins over USC and Blooming Prairie which earned MVL an outright Gopher/Valley Conference crown. "We are playing well right now -- since the LCWM game, our overall intensity has come around. We are fine-tuning things now."

Buboltz wants to make sure that his special teams play well and eliminate turnovers. "We did not play a good first half against them but we played a better second half," he said. "Going into that game, we had only scored one touchdown in the second half in our first four games. We scored twice in the second half and relied on the defense after that."

If MVL wins, they will host the winner of the Windom-USC game on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Johnson Field.

ST. CLAIR AT NEW ULM CATHEDRAL, 7:30 P.M, TUESDAY JOHNSON FIELD

New Ulm Cathedral football coach Denny Lux said that St. Clair, the Greyhounds' first-round opponent on Tuesday "resembles Sleepy Eye Public offense. They run the double-slot, they run the same type of plays that Sleepy Eye Public uses. Even on their special teams they will run run reverses on both their punt and kick-off teams."

On defense, St. Clair runs a 5-3 defense. "They will not to a lot of things that we have not seen before," Lux said.

Lux feels that both teams will match up well size-wise. "They do have some speed at both the split ends and the slotback. They also have a quarterback that likes to throw -- they do not typically throw the ball down the field a lot, but they like to throw it out to the their receivers on the sideline and let them run with the ball."

He also feels that the Greyhounds have a little more experience that St. Clair does, which may help.

"I think that in our last games (Sleepy Eye St. Mary's, Springfield and Wabasso), we have played strong teams and have gotten us ready for the playoffs. We are hitting real well and are playing physical," he said. "We think that our tough schedule in the Tomahawk Conference gets us ready for the playoffs."

He added that big plays need to come from defensive tackles Jeremy Penkert and Al Gleisner. "They have been defensive standouts all year long and if we can get pressure on their quarterback, we have the defensive backs that will go after the ball."