Posted at: 11/30/2009 9:46 PM | KSAX.com
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New London-Spicer Goes the Distance

NEW LONDON, MN-The Wildcats came into the 2009 football season with one goal, to go to the state tournament. Now that the dust has settled and the season is over, not only did they make it to the state tournament and win, they didn't lose a single game.

"The junior class coming up and worked hard to be varsity football players. It was a good mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors. So coming into the season I thought we would be very good and we ended up being very successful" New London-Spicer head coach Dan Essler said.

NLS came into the post season on all cylinders with a record of 11-0 taking the West Central Conference and the section. They used that momentum in game one of the state tournament beating Minneapolis North 28-8. Game two was more of the same as they took down Kasson-Mantorville 34-14. The championship game was a different story however.

"The championship game was a roller coaster" NLS quarterback Jayme Moten said. "That's all I can really say about it. It started out strong right away on the first drive and then stuff kind of started to go down hill. The end of the third quarter we decided to try out our spread offense and throw everything we had at them, trick plays and everything and it seemed to work."

Looking forward to next season there are some holes that NLS will need to fill. 18 seniors are leaving and the great defensive core of this year will be cracked. Essler says he is still confident that they will have a strong year with the multiple juniors from this season stepping up to fill those new roles.

Written for the web by: Tony Seeman

aseeman@ksax.com