(Underwood) The Underwood football team finds itself in a rare spot when it takes the field against St. Albert on Friday night. The Eagles enter the game with a 0-2 record, losing to two tough opponents, Van Meter and Kuemper Catholic. Underwood Head Coach Nate Mechaelson admits his players haven’t faced much regular-season adversity over the past few years.
Underwood’s next opponent is St. Albert. Mechaelson says the Falcons have improved in all facets of the game. The Falcons lost to Treynor in week one, 28-23, and topped West Monona 41-20 last week. St. Albert’s offense is putting up some solid numbers, with 340 yards passing and 267 yards in the air.
St. Albert quarterback Owen Marshall is having a great start to the season: 24-39 passing for 301 yards, five touchdowns, and two interceptions.
“Coach Michaelson is challenging his football team to demonstrate more leadership this week.”
Mechaelson says Quarterback Garrett Luett is one of those leaders. The junior is 16-26 and has thrown the football for 154 yards, one touchdown, and one interception.
With just nine yards rushing through the season’s first two games, Mechaelson admits they must find more consistency in that facet of the game. He says turning the ball over is another issue. The Eagles had four turnovers last week against Kuemper. He admits some were unlucky and credits Kuemper’s secondary for forcing the others. Michaelson says defensively that they stopped the run for the most part in week one and did a good job stopping the run in the first half against Kuemper, but not so much in the second half. Mechaelson says the bottom line is to create more turnovers, establish the run game, and eliminate presnap penalties.
The kick-off is set for 7:00 p.m. at St. Albert.