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PREP FOOTBALL: Lakeview looks to earn homecoming win over YME

Independent file photo A pair of Lakeview defenders close in to tackle a Canby opponent during their Sept. 22, 2017 game. The Lakers will host Yellow Medicine East today in their homecoming game.

COTTONWOOD – Entering tonight’s contest between the Yellow Medicine East Sting and the Lakeview Lakers, both teams have done their due diligence in game planning for what the opposing team will bring schematically, but are even more determined to clean up their own mental errors that have plagued the two teams through the first four weeks of the season. Lakeview coach John Sterner pointed out that the consequences of the mental lapses have come in the form of big plays.

“The biggest thing is mental errors,” said Sterner. “We play really well and then we either relax a little bit or think that ‘Hey we get this’ or ‘Boy these guys are tough’ and we start to make a few mental errors, and then those turn into big plays. Sometimes you can make a mental error and it’s not a big play, but it seems to be every one that we’ve made has been a big play.”

Sting coach Dave Schueler has a similar philosophy heading into tonight’s game.

“The biggest thing that we really need to improve upon is cleaning up our own play,” said Schueler. “Because mental mistakes have really hurt us in our first four games and you see with our one victory against Wabasso we had very few mental mistakes. We executed well, we made the plays we should, we caught the ball when we should. You look at that Ortonville game and the Tracy game (and) we just had some dropped passes. We had some silly penalties and that’s the kind of stuff that we really have to clean up on.”

As expected, both teams have attacked these issues head on practice in hopes of eliminating them when the lights come on for games.

“No mental errors, we’ve been working on that really hard,” said Sterner. “Consistency too, that’s the hard thing is that consistency. You can’t take a practice play off, you have to stay intense, you have to stay focused. You have to do every drill as if it’s a game and that’s probably the biggest thing.”

Schueler has provided incentives for those that play mistake-free during practice, namely in the form of not having to do extra laps or push ups post-practice.

“We bring it up verbally often, but then we also we increase the amount of consequences when mental mistakes happen,” said Schueler. “Whether it be push ups or we make a mark and say every mental mistake’s an extra 20-yard sprint at the end of practice, things like that. So we kind of force the issue that we can’t have these anymore and we got to make sure that we clean them up, and it helps them focus a little better in practice (to) make sure that they do their very best there. As everybody knows, the better you practice the better you’re going to play.”

Now, inching closer and closer to kickoff, both team’s have also shifted their focus to stopping the opposing team’s offenses. For the Lakers, Sterner is determined to limit the damage done in the run game.

“They’re a running team predominantly, thats how they like to move the ball,” said Sterner. “They’ve made some big catches, but the big thing that we have to be able to do is stop their run. We’re a pretty good pass defense team, we haven’t given up big plays passing, it’s been the running game that what we gotta shore up.”

Schueler of the Sting is not only focused on stopping the Lakers’ ground game, but also quarterback Aaron Loe and his ability to improvise on passing plays by keeping his eyes downfield searching for open receivers.

“Their quarterback is quick and he throws a nice ball,” said Schueler. “One big thing with him too is when he scrambles you cant count on him just to run, because he keeps his eyes down field so our secondary has to make sure that they stick on their receivers. Otherwise we’ll get that late little dump pass over one of our secondary (players) that tries to come up, and that can be a big play. Their running back is a good powerful runner, he likes to put his shoulder pads down and brings a load so we gotta make sure that we’re tackling low and wrapping up on him.”

Kickoff for today’s matchup is slated for 7:00 p.m. in Cottonwood as both teams look to earn their second victory of the season.

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