With most of last year’s starting lineup back, the Iowa Falls-Alden football team will put its offseason work to the test when it travels to Webster City for Friday’s season opener.
The Lynx will look to bounce back from a 3-6 season last year, which was their first losing season in a decade. Cadet coach Eric Walkingstick says they’ll need a disciplined approach against a run-heavy offense.
“They like to run the ball, they love to be physical,” Walkingstick says. “We have to match that physicality with them. We have to be intelligent. We have to be able to keep our head above water a little bit. There’s always a fear that when you haven’t had success, that when something goes wrong, all of a sudden your mind goes in bad places. For us, we’ve got to keep our head above water. And we’ve got to keep treading and churning and fighting. The score always starts off zero to zero. If we go three and out, we can’t panic if all of a sudden they do score a touchdown. We’ve got to battle back. So resiliency is gonna be the key for us. If we can keep our head above water, if we can be resilient, I think there could be a good outcome to this game for us.”
Defensively, Walkingstick has high confidence in the defensive line, a unit he says will have great depth.
“Conner Kuker is a kid that has done a great job, works really hard, and has really came into that position. Brooks Hickman is a kid that, he asked me the other day how’s he doing, and I said, you are so different from even a year ago. And he strives every day to get better. You’ve got a kid named Brady Lancaster that will be playing the defensive side of the ball. He is a competitor, nonstop. You also have Reece Rankin, who is an absolute unit. When you say dog, he is a dog. We got a kid named Tray and Tray’s gonna be good. We got lots of depth with the D-line, which is fun. We’ll be able to roll lots of guys in, and that’s gonna help us out down the road, but our D-line is definitely a strength.”
The Cadets will look to bounce back from last year’s 2-7 season, with many experienced playmakers on both sides of the ball.
Webster City has won seven straight in the series, with the most recent meeting taking place in 2016.
It’ll start at 7:00 p.m.
