Comet's Ehn Encouraged by New Football Schedule
2010 BCLUW Football Schedule
Aug. 27 vs. East Marshall
Sept. 3 at GMG, Garwin
Sept. 10 vs. Eagle Grove
Sept. 17 vs. Woodward Academy
Sept. 24 vs. Ogden (Homecoming)
Oct. 1 at Gladbrook-Reinbeck
Oct. 8 vs. South Hamilton, Jewell
Oct. 15 at Woodward-Granger
Oct. 22 at Hudson
“I think this sets us up to be successful. I’m very excited about it.”
Josh Ehn
By Sam Martin
The Record Sports
The new football schedules have been finalized, and BCLUW’s docket has head coach Josh Ehn encouraged.
“I think this sets us up to be successful,” he said. “I’m very excited about it.”
The Comets will open the season with four of their first five games at home. Non-district rival East Marshall remains on the schedule, and the Comets gladly traded their second non-district matchup from last year, Belmond-Klemme, for a much closer opponent in GMG. BCLUW then opens district play with home games against Eagle Grove, Woodward Academy and Ogden. The latter, the Comets’ homecoming game on Sept. 24, pits two teams who were held winless last season.
“It’s good that we play four of our first five games at home,” Ehn said. “As a young team coming off the season we had last year, I think that’ll really be positive for us, get us some confidence, get us hopefully five wins. Looking at that, I think we can be competitive in every single one of those games.”
The Comets then hit the road for three of their last four games. They travel to Gladbrook-Reinbeck Oct. 1, host South Hamilton on Oct. 8, and close out the season with road games at Woodward-Granger and Hudson.
The district, by and large, is up for grabs. Eagle Grove, a nine-win team last season, graduated crucial parts of a potent option offense that racked up 5,100 yards, and its coach, Shawn Meth, left the program to take over at Sioux City North.
Woodward-Granger, which advanced to the third round of last year’s playoffs, will have less depth now that it won’t have Woodward Academy from which to draw players. The two have competed together for the past several seasons, but this year Woodward Academy, an all-male juvenile residential treatment facility, will field its own team.
“We felt that we wanted to be completely on our own,” said Bill Dean, executive director of Woodward Academy and its head football coach. “We want our own identity. We had a great relationship with Woodward-Granger, still do, but it was a good time for us to be able to take on this challenge and start our own football team.”
Unlike its district opponents, WA will have a roster that changes completely from year to year. Dean said his staff will focus on consistency, hoping to field a roster that stays the same from one game to the next. But given the nature of the program, in which youths are continually arriving and departing, that could prove difficult.
“We’re not going to have kids on our team that we know are going to be graduating in the next two, three, four weeks,” Dean said. “We will set up the year from Day 1 being as consistent as possible. … There are challenges, but with good planning on our part we should be able to limit that.”
While East Marshall and Gladbrook-Reinbeck are held over from last season, one familiar face not on BCLUW’s schedule is Grundy Center. That means the annual gridiron rivalry will not take place in 2010 or 2011.
“We called them about maybe a non-district game and their list was full, they were going in a different direction,” Ehn said. “I’m a little bit disappointed with the history there. … I’ve been around this program for 26 years and I can’t think of a time that we have not played Grundy Center.”
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