STEWART - McLeod West's difficult season got even tougher Friday night.
Not only did the Falcons have to face fourth-ranked New Ulm Cathedral in a key Southern Minnesota Conference battle but their already depleted roster got even smaller.
McLeod West started the game with just 19 players suited up on the sideline. That number dwindled to 16 after two key players were taken from the field in an ambulance and starting quarterback Spencer Glaeser left the first half with a concussion.
Maybe the least important part of the game was the final score as Cathedral came away with the 28-8 victory.
"We had three key kids go out and we had to swap around positions," McLeod West coach Bill Neubarth said. "I thought they stepped it up and did alright. They were concerned with their teammates, they were concerned about how they were doing.
"Cathedral is a good quality football team and if they put their stuff together they could be state champs. They are a very good football team."
The Greyhounds knew coming in that McLeod West may be small in numbers but the Falcons were going to put up a fight.
"They are just as capable as us," Cathedral quarterback Jon Braegelmann said. "We didn't see them as anything different. We saw them as an equal football team tonight. We had to not underestimate them and come out and play our hardest."
And the Greyhounds did that from the start as their first two drives ended in touchdowns.
Frank Johnson put Cathedral on the board first when he capped a seven play, 49-yard drive with a 3-yard touchdown. Cody Moldan's extra point was good to put Cathedral up 7-0.
Derek Wilfahrt, who had a game-high 134 yards rushing on the night, scored a 46-yard touchdown on the Greyhounds next drive and Cathedral had a 14-0 lead.
The first major injury for McLeod West happened on the first play of Cathedral's third drive when Brody Nelson was taken away in an ambulance with a dislocated shoulder.
Johnson added the Greyhounds third touchdown of the game when he scampered in on a 1-yard run to put Cathedral up 21-0 with 1:15 to go in the half.
But on that play, Sebastian Spray-Smith was injured. He was down on the field with an apparent spinal injury for several minutes and play was stopped for more than a half hour while they waited for an ambulance from Hutchinson to come and take him away.
"It was a little bit difficult to stay focused the entire game because of those long timeouts," Cathedral coach Denny Lux said. "That affects all of the players that are on the field - both teams."
Cathedral added its final touchdown of the game when Zach Fischer ran it from 3-yards out to put the Greyhounds ahead 28-0 with 4:25 to go in the third quarter.
"Zach is just a hard kid to bring down," Lux said of the 255-pound lineman. "He is a very athletic kid. He is definitely a kid that can run the football when we need him to."
McLeod West finally got on the board in the fourth quarter when back-up quarterback Daniel Rosenau hit Tyler Knick for a 14-yard pass with 8:33 to play. Rosenau took the 2-point conversion himself to make the final score 28-8.
It has been a busy week for the Falcons as they were featured on ESPN.com and a television crew from CBS was at the game too for a feature story for the evening news on Oct. 10. But Neubarth wasn't going to let any of the extra attention affect the way his team prepared for Friday's game.
"We didn't do anything different this week in practice," the coach said. "It's football as we do it."
Lux didn't want that extra focus to disrupt his team either.
"We felt a lot of pressure on us," he said. "But I am impressed with the maturity our kids showed tonight. We told our kids that this game was going to be the toughest challenge to stay focused with all of those things going on."
After starting the season 4-0, McLeod West has dropped its last two games. The Falcons hope to turn things around next week against Buffalo Lake-Hector in what will more than likely be the final game ever played at their home field.
"We just have to stay positive and stay focused," Neubarth said. "It's going to be a sad day when we have to step off this field."
On the other hand, Cathedral is off to a perfect 6-0 start to the season and will try to keep that streak alive at Sleepy Eye St. Mary's next week.
"We are just playing at the level that we feel we can play at," Lux said. "We knew coming in that we had a solid team and we just continue to get better in a number of facets in the game."
