SPORTS WRAP
The end of the Steele County Fair blended into the start of the high school football season with the annual player and cheerleader rally in Fair Square Park Sunday night.
Cheerleading coach Jenna Compton started it off by introducing her squad which features 14 seniors. She invited students in kindergarten through sixth grade to the Huskies Cheer Camp on Oct. 7.
Senior linebacker Logan Risser enjoys the event.
“I love it. It connects the football players to the community, which is probably why we have such a strong football community. And it really helps gather support for our team,” said Risser.
Coach Jeff Williams shared details of each player, as he has for nearly 30 years – always all off the top of his head, without notes.
“He’s a very bright guy,” Risser states. “He has information on just the most random things no one would really think about. He’s got a pretty big brain,” said Risser.
Even with that incredible gray matter, Williams occasionally has a glitch. While introducing Andrew Selbrade he confessed, “I always have to – back behind the stage – make sure I go through every kid in my head before we do intros because I’ve had so many of these guys’ older brothers, dads and uncles.”
But rather than mixing Andrew up with his brother Josh – a quarterback from the 1997 team – Williams submitted a roster identifying him as Tyler; Andrew’s uncle who was a baseball infielder. “We got it corrected,” he assured us.
Scrimmage
The Huskies go to Rosemount on Saturday for a scrimmage, joining Anoka and Woodbury. Williams says the goal is to make “sure we can cover everything that teams do from a schematic standpoint. Can we run against all different fronts? Can we handle spread offenses? We’ll be putting our kids into positions to be successful against other good athletes to see what they’re capable of doing,” said Williams.
Risser steps into a big role on defense. “It’s a big switch from left guard to middle linebacker. It’ll be really fun this year, getting in on all the tackles,” he said.
He’s been putting in the work. “Getting in my playbook. Learning all the calls defense, not just what I’m supposed to do, but what everyone’s supposed to do on the defense because I have to coordinate them…bBlocking for seven seconds is a lot different than running around on the field making tackles,” said Risser.
The regular season opens on Friday, Aug. 29 against Mankato East at Federated Field.
Speech nationals
Incoming Owatonna High School senior Vitaly Bauer has a jump start on his speech season. After a state meet appearance last spring, he went to nationals in May and had a great experience.
“The day before competition they had workshops where you’d go work on different aspects of your speech with actual professionals, and it helped so much. And in the competition, there I was expecting them to be really competitive, but they were all super nice. They all supported you,” said Bauer.
He made friends there that he continues to text with.
Bauer’s speech was a humorous spoof of the 007 James Bond spy genre. He will continue in the humous category and has his speech picked out with the help of his coach.
He also plans a duo with seventh grader Anna Cole. “She actually reached the finals last year at Owatonna and was really good as a sixth-grade rookie. We’re both very equal in skill level. And it’s going to be even better because we work off each other’s energy and it’s going to be a really fun experience,” said Bauer.