Led by first-year head coach Chris Moscho, the Jaguars football team will open the 2010 season at Barrett on September 3, taking on the host West Central Area Knights. Moscho, who served as assistant coach the previous two years and is a 2002 Melrose Area High School graduate, will also have a new group of assistant coaches to work with.
WCA, who features 1,000-yard passer Colton Blascyk, senior, finished the 2009 campaign with an overall record of 4-5, including 0-1 in the Section 6AA playoffs. They finished 2-4 (4th place tie with Pelican Rapids) in the Heart O' Lakes Classic conference.
Click here to read a story on the Knights' 48-12 playoff loss to Pierz in the Section 6AA quarterfinals: http://craigolsonsports.com/newsarticle.php?yid=0910&tid=222&sid=1230444&nid=33565 It was a game that played out just as many meetings the Jaguars have had with Pierz, as WCA fell behind 14-0 only 80 seconds into the game and trailed 28-0 after the first quarter.
The Knights graduated two of their four top running backs from '09. One of the backs returning (quarterback Blascyk) ran for 265 yards and four touchdowns. Their top running back in 2009, Cole Amundson, ran for 700 yards but is one of the two who graduated.
The biggest change for West Central Area is in their coaching staff, which has been revamped in similar fashion to what has happened to the Jaguars. Their previous head coach who took over their program in 2007, Tim Pattrin, has been replaced by David Drexler. Two of their four assistants will also be new.
Drexler is a 2001 WCA graduate. I just did some quick research and saw that he was the Heart O' Lakes Conference MVP during his senior year in which the Knights went 7-3 overall and were runners-up in the HOL. He passed for 1452 yards his senior year, and had a 51% completion rate. He also ran for 6 touchdowns and passed for 13. As PAT kicker, he tallied 23 points his senior year as well.
More noteworthy was Drexler's junior year in 1999, when the WCA Knights went all the way through playoffs to the Prep Bowl, where they lost to a very tough Waterville-Elysian-Morristown Buccaneers team. WCA went 13-1 that year, including an 8-0 regular season and an HOL conference championship. Drexler was the featured quarterback that season as well, and he finished with 1270 yards and a 52.8% completion rate. That year the Knights were a run first, run second, and then think about passing team led by senior Jake Sternhagen, who finished with 1,902 yards on 348 carries (5.5 yard average) and 27 touchdowns.
The Jaguars went 2-7 last season, including a 2-5 mark in the Central Minnesota Conference. They hosted WCA in the season opener and fell 20-7, as the Knights were on their way to a 4-2 start to the season before dropping their final three games.
Here's my early prediction: if the Jaguars have a solid turnout for pre-season practices and then turn that into a win in the season opener against WCA, they have a real shot at finishing 4-4 or 5-3 overall heading into the Section 4A playoffs.
That would be terribly exciting!
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