Football notes

Tom Schuller is a football coach, so obviously he's going to worry. About a lot of things. Absent from his list of concerns going into Thursday's first game of the season for his Jackson County Central football team was the Huskies sophomore starting quarterback, Jacob Kruger. 'There was a lot of things I was worried about but unbelievably that wasn't one of them because he's been just phenomenal in practice,' said the Hall of Fame coach, who saw his team win 43-22 over visiting Maple River at Swearingen Field. Thanks for reading Sports Rx! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 'Any mistakes he made were actually shocking to me, which is a crazy thing for me to say about a sophomore, but he has been steady. I was happy he didn't get hit a whole lot. You fear that some about a sophomore quarterback that he might get whacked around. I thought the offensive line did a nice job.' For his part, the calm Kruger took the performance in stride. 'I was a little nervous at the start,' he explained. 'Before the game I could really feel the nerves, tried to get rid of them right before the game wanted to be confident in myself and my teammates.' Kruger's first varsity completion was a 41-yard touchdown pass to another sophomore (you'll notice a trend develop), Brody Anderson. He would finish 10-for-15 passing for 168 yards with six different receivers catching passes. 'You just have to find the open guy,' Kruger commented. 'Everyone needs to execute just like we do in practice, even against nobody. You have to play as a team and trust everybody.' That said, Kruger was ready to move on from the convincing win over the highly touted Eagles. 'We just have to move on and focus on the next team and the next practice,' he said. Anderson, who was more of a known quantity having seen a good deal of playing time as a freshman, caught three passes for 52 yards including that TD and ran the ball four times for 42 yards that included a 16-yard touchdown run. 'He's like a puff of smoke sometimes,' Schuller said about Anederson. 'It looks like guys maybe have an angle on him and then all of a sudden, he's like a Ferrari. There's an extra gear there that nobody else has. That's why I wanted to get him the ball late with everybody tired. He was tired too, but his tired is still really fast.' Jackson County Central had a two-score lead late in the third quarter before the Eagles scored with :38 remaining in the third to cut the margin to 29-22. On the ensuing kickoff, JCC's Mason Helmers (a sophomore) dropped the ball near the right sideline but picked the ball up, cut across field and wound up in the end zone along the other sideline and the Huskies were able to take a two-score lead into the final 12 minutes. 'I was kind of panicking,' Helmers said. 'But I saw a hole and just ran as fast as I could. Some guys made some really good blocks.' Helmers and the Huskies put the game away when he scored on a three-yard run with 2:57 to play. Like Kruger, Helmers is looking forward to what's ahead. 'I'm really hyped,' he said. 'I'm just ready for whoever we play next.' The whoever is Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial at 7 p.m. Friday in Lake Crysyal. The Knights opened their season with a 48-6 win at St. James. About 150 miles away from where the JCC was playing Maple River, Roman Voss and the University of Golden Gophers opening their season at Huntington Bank Stadium with a 59-7 win over Eastern Illinois. Older brother Rudy understood the assignment. His place was in Jackson on the Huskies sideline. 'I was sad to miss it,' Rudy said of Roman's debut in Maroon and Gold. 'But I made a commitment to these kids over the past couple of years. I knew how big a game this was. We haven't gotten a lot of recognition this past year. 'We were thrown a little under the radar. People think because we've lost some players that it's over. I think we found out that's not the case.' Roman saw some playing for Minnesota, which hosts Mississippi State this Saturday afternoon after JCC plays in Lake Crystal the night before. 'I was sad to miss his first outing, but he understood. He knows that I'm there to support him. Any game that I can get to I'm going to go to. He's my best friend. We're good.' MID-SOUTH (BROWN) DISTRICT Standings Jackson Count Central 0-0 Le Sueur-Henderson 0-0 Luverne 0-0 Minnesota Valley Lutheran 0-0 Sibley East 0-0 Pipestone 0-0 Thursday, Sept. 3 Jackson County Central 43, Maple River 22 Le Sueur-Henderson 34, Lester Prairie 30 Luverne 41, Blue Earth Area 0 Mayer Lutheran 38, Sibley East 0 Minneota 44, Minnesota Valley Lutheran 6 Redwood Valley 49, Pipestone 12 Friday, Sept. 4 Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial 48, St. James Area 6 Martin County West 60, Windom 0 Friday, Sept. 11 Jackson County Central at Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial Le Sueur-Henderson at Minnesota Valley Lutheran Pipestone at Windom Sibley East at Luverne Nothing gets the kids involved like a reference to a line from a movie released 84 years ago, right? Anyway, here's a roundup of how some of the usual suspects in the Class 2A football ratings fared in Week 1. Teams are listed in alphabetical order. Aitkin: Defeated Crosby-Ironton 29-0 Caledonia: Defeated Rushford-Peterson 25-18 Chatfield: Defeated Rochester Lourdes 24-7 Eden Valley-Watkins: Defeated Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City 46-14 Goodhue: Lost to Triton 21-14 Holdingford: Defeated St. Cloud Cathedral 7-6 Jackson County Central: Defeated Maple River 43-22 Moose Lake-Willow River: Defeated International Falls 26-0 Osakis: Defeated St. Cloud Apollo 30-0 Pillager: Defeated Warroad 37-20 Redwood Valley: Defeated Pipestone 49-12 St. Cloud Cathedral: Lost to Holdingford 7-6 Staples-Motley: Lost to East Grand Forks 31-6 Triton: Defeated Goodhue 21-14 Waterville-Elysian-Morristown: Defeated Southland 20-8 Jackson County Central has second longest current winning streak in the state, trailing only Minneota. Here are the longest current Minnesota high school football winning streaks in each class. 9-player: Hills-Beaver Creek 14 Class 1A: Minneota 47 Class 2A: Jackson County Central 27 Class 3A: Annandale 14 Class 4A: Orono 7 Class 5A: Many with 1 Class 6A: Edina 6 Minneota is two wins away from moving into the top five list in the all-time unbeaten streaks in Minnesota high school football history, a mark it would share with a Vikings team from the 1980s. Here are the top five streaks: 76: Stephen-Argyle Central 2003–2008 60: Minneapolis Washburn 1966–1973 (Includes two ties) 71: Caledonia 2015–2021 51: Grand Meadow 2013–2015 48: Minneota 1986–1989 Thanks for reading Sports Rx! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.