Wildcats hoping to return to the football field this week
HARTINGTON — Now what for the Hartington-Newcastle football team?
Hopefully, the Wildcats will get to play at 7 p.m. Friday against visiting Plainview, but after two straight games canceled due to a positive result for COVID-19 among the Wildcats, anything is possible.
“This is a unique place to be as a coach and a team,” head coach Corey Uldrich said. “We’ve had 21 days between our win in week one and our week four game. We’ve had the opportunity to spend time trying to improve some areas of our team and build depth. Unfortunately, we may have some rust this deep into the season that other teams don’t deal with because of our lack of game reps at game speed.”
Uldrich said what ever happens, the kids are ready to play.
“I do expect us to come out excited and hungry to play, as we’ve had two games taken from our schedule,” he said.
Uldrich expects Plainview to be a physical and wellcoached outfit.
“They possess an all-state caliber player in Alizae Mejia, and they have other good weapons that go around him,” Uldrich said. “They like to play a physical style of play on offense, running the ball first and using that to set up play-action passing. They play a unique defense for the 8-man game, so we’ve had to work on blocking schemes to try and counter what they do well.”
Uldrich has had too little in terms of what to look at and gauge his team, but at least his team is physically healthy in terms of football injuries.
“We needed to improve our depth after our week one win, and having some of our upperclassmen quarantined for a period of time has allowed us to focus in on some of our younger players taking reps with the first team offense and defense,” he said.
Cedar Catholic rolls
The Trojans shot out to a 21-0 lead after one quarter and rolled to a 50-15 home win over Tekamah-Herman last weekend to move to 3-0 this season.
Quarterback Tate Thoene threw touchdown passes to Noah Arens, Charlie Schroeder and Myles Thoene in the first 12 minutes and the rout was on for the Trojans.
Cedar Catholic finished with 392 yards of total offense as Tate Thoene finished with 132 yards passing and those three scoring passes along with 43 yards rushing and two runs that ended in the house while Easton Becker ran 18 times for 153 yards and a touchdown while Myles Thoene finished with 61 yards receiving and Schroeder collected 49 yards on two catches.
“I thought our team had our best week of preparation going into our game last week,” Cedar head coach Chad Cattau said. “Each of the kids on the team really did a great job and brought a lot of energy each day of practice and it really showed by our performance on the field. I thought we had a lot of kids contribute in a wide variety of ways.
“Everyone did a great job in their roles and that allowed us to have the success we had on the field. Overall it was a great team win. We had great contributions in all three aspects of the game.”
Despite the result, the Trojans still have a few things to tweak in order to improve.
“We still made some mistakes that we need to clean up, especially with our turnovers,” Cattau said. “We can’t continue to turn the ball over at the rate we are and have success each week. We are giving away too many possessions and opportunities to score during games. It is something we can clean up though.”
The Trojans head to David City (2-1) for a 7 p.m. Thursday tilt.
“David City is a very aggressive team on both sides of the ball,” Cattau said. “Their linemen fire off the ball with great intensity so we really have to prepare hard for that. It’s not something that’s easy to simulate. They run a lot of option and power football on offense and defensively they will give us a variety of looks so we need to be prepared for that.”
Wynot
The Blue Devils won their second straight game with a 34-20 home win over Homer last weekend.
Next, the Blue Devils head to Randolph for a 7 p.m. game on Friday.
State Ratings
For the first time in many years, Cedar County did not have a single team in the football ratings when the new season kicked off a few weeks ago.
That all changed this week. The Cedar Catholic Trojans are rated eighth in this week’s Huskerland Prep Report Class C2 poll and 10th in this week’s Lincoln Journal Star poll.
Omaha World Herald
1. Oakland-Craig 3-0
2. Aquinas 3-0
3. Ord 3-0
4. Fremont Bergan 3-0
5. Wilber-Clatonia 3-0
6. Sutton 2-1
7. Wahoo Neumann 2-1
8. Norfolk Catholic 1-2
9. Bridgeport 3-0
10. Cedar Catholic 3-0
Huskerland Prep Report
1. Oakland-Craig 3-0
2. Ord 3-0
3. Aquinas 3-0
4. Wilber-Clatonia 3-0
5. Sutton 2-1
6. Fremont Bergan 3-0
7. Wahoo Neumann 2-1
8. Cedar Catholic 3-0
9. North Platte St. Pats 2-0
10. Crofton 1-1
“We did not play our best game against Homer,” Wynot head coach Steve Heimes said. “Zack Foxhoven made a great play to start the third quarter by taking the ball away from their quarterback and running it in for a touchdown. Homer was very well prepared for what we do on offense and we had to make a lot of adjustments at halftime.”
Homer led 14-8 at intermission before Foxhoven’s play sparked a 26-point third quarter to pull away for the eventual win.
Owen Sudbeck scored on a 31-yard touchdown run and Anthony Haberman added 38- yard run and 14-yard touchdown pass to Colin Wieseler in the pivotal quarter.
Haberman finished with 84 yards on the ground and 99 through the air and Sudbeck added 77 yards rushing.
District play begins and that means a clash with Randolph.
“Randolph is a good team, their running back is their workhorse and probably one of the top in state in our class,” Wynot head coach Steve Heimes said of Justin Haselhorst. “We will have to tackle well. Randolph is always prepared for us and they throw in different wrinkles for us on both sides of the ball.
“Our defense has gotten better but we need to keep improving. Our offense needs more consistency.”
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