Football opener

The season opener for the B-B-E Jaguars football team is set for 7 p.m. tonight in Grove City the against Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City Falcons. If you've never watched football at A-C-GC, here's where you go: drive to Grove City (I like the Paynesville way unless you're in the southern region of the B-B-E district) and then skip across the train tracks on the west side of Grove City to get to their 5th-12th grade high school. The football complex is located southeast of the school.

If you want to read the season preview for the Jaguars, go to page four of this week's Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper.

Here's video of the Jaguars warming up for practice on Monday, August 17:


The weather forecast says that Grove City may get hit by thunderstorms this afternoon (2:45 p.m. according to Weather.com) and then by rain between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m....but by game time there is no sign that bad weather will be an issue.

As of now, if thunderstorms somehow interrupted or nixed the game, the only option is to move it to Monday night. Which would not be good and would make an absolute mess of next week!! Obviously, no matter what, if the game can't be played tonight due to the weather, it will not be played. *Praise the Lord that we're only talking about a trip to Grove City and not to Lester Prairie or Norwood-Young America!!! Thank you, District Football!

Here's what happens when enrollment dips in a small school, something we need to work to fight against every day of the year at B-B-E...at MACCRAY their class sizes have dipped so low (into the 30s) in the high school that they have moved to nine-man football for the first time in the history of their consolidated school. As recently as 2008, MACCRAY was a Class 2A football school, but they have fallen on very hard times in recent years. MACCRAY begins their nine-man football season in Moorhead today (1 p.m game)...nuts!! Then for away games they go to Brandon (85 miles one way!), Danube (just 23 miles vs. Renville County West) and Graceville (85 miles vs. Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley).

Fun facts: here's the list of previous season-opening opponents for our Jaguars football team...the closest we've had in school history is Kimball (back in the 90s the Cubs were a non-conference opponent until 1999) = Bertha-Hewitt, Kimball, Ortonville, Ogilvie, West Central Area, Lester Prairie/Holy Trinity and finally, for just one year, Norwood-Young America (2014).

B-H was the season-opening opponent in 1988. In that game, the first-ever game for the Jaguars football team, the Blue & Silver won 34-18 in Bertha. From 1989 through 1998, the Jaguars only managed to get two wins against Kimball (1990, 1997) in the season opener. Against Ortonville (1999-2004) the Jaguars beat the Trojans just one time, in 2000, by a 13-8 score. Against Ogilvie, the Jaguars went 1-1 with a loss in Belgrade in 2005 and then a 36-22 win at Ogilvie in 2006; I remember that long, long trip to Ogilvie in 2006 of 90 miles!!!! Good grief! It was just a bit farther than the drive to Ortonville. From 2007 to 2010, the Jaguars went 2-2 against the Knights, including a 13-0 win at Barrett in Coach Chris Moscho's first game as head coach of the program. From 2011 to 2013, the Jaguars went 1-2 against LP/HT. And last year, against Class 2A NYA, the Jaguars lost 28-0 to a team that made it all the way to the state tournament after losing in their section finals game in 2013.

For the foreseeable future, A-C-GC will be the season-opening opponent for the Jaguars. I think it's absolutely terrific to get an opponent in Week One that is just a hop and a skip away and not 60 to 90 miles away!