NEW ULM — New Ulm High School and Minnesota Valley Lutheran both have home games on Friday and fans of New Ulm Cathedral will travel to Adrian as the fifth week of high school football begins.

UNITED SOUTH CENTRAL (2-2) AT MINNESOTA VALLEY LUTHERAN (0-4), 7 P.M. FRIDAY JOHNSON FIELD

The Rebels come into their game with the Chargers off of a 30-26 loss to St. Clair while the Chargers fell 27-6 to Southland last week.

“They have a nice backfield,” Chargers’ head coach Jim Buboltz said. “Their quarterback and one of their backs do a nice job of running the ball and they have some decent speed. They primarily like to run the ball and they play a tough 3-3 defense.”

Buboltz said that USC reminds him a lot of St. Clair in their style of play. He said that the strength of the Rebels is their offense.

“They play a lot of players both ways,” he said. “They have some good speed. Hopefully we can do a good job with the running game like we did last week.”

Playing consistent has been a concern for the Chargers this season.

“We need to eliminate negative plays,” Buboltz said. “That is a big thing for us — we have had enough of those already in our first four games. We need to find the things that we do well and center on them.”

NEW ULM CATHEDRAL (3-1) AT ADRIAN (0-4) 7 P.M. FRIDAY ADRIAN

Cathedral travels to play a winless Adrian team on Friday.

“They are really similar to what we have seen the last three years,” Cathedral coach Denny Lux said. “They will run multiple sets on offense. They will use their quarterback as a runner besides their two running backs. They will try and spread you out to throw and run. We know that this is a game defensively where we have a lot of things that we have to recognize”

Even though the Dragons come into this game winless, Lux knows that Adrian has been a solid football program.

“They are going to get back on track because they are staying with what they have been doing the last few years,” Lux said. “They have some younger players who are filling some big roles right now and they are learning their offense and defense.”

It is a big game for the Greyhounds in Section 3A. Right now, Cathedral is third in the section behind Wabasso and Murray County Central, a team that they beat last week.

ST. PETER (1-3) AT NEW ULM (2-2) 7 P.M. FRIDAY NEW ULM HIGH SCHOOL

One of the dangers of high school football is comparing scores of common opponents that teams play.

Last week, St. Peter lost to Worthington 27-12. Earlier in the season, the Eagles defeated Worthington 44-16.

But Eagles coach Corey Kneeshaw, whose team is coming off a 73-0 loss to unbeaten and unscored upon Marshall last week, knows that his team needs to rebound with a complete four quarters game Friday.

“We have addressed to the players (the common scores) that St. Peter is coming in here for one thing and that is to beat us in our Homecoming game,” Kneeshaw said. “We beat them there last year so we know that they want revenge. We need to get back to playing our game.”

Defensively, the Saints are anchored by 270-pound lineman Tony Putz.

“But it will be interesting to see if they play zone or man defense on the back end but we are prepared for either defense,” Kneeshaw said. “I would like to think that our receivers would have an advantage in this game — we need to get some of our players back on track. We need to get [Connor] Foley [wide receiver] and get [running back] Luke Scheid going.”

Kneeshaw said that Homecoming has shortened the practices and also the contact.

“And we are still waiting to find out if [running back] Braden Zimmerman will be back. Alex Portner [defensive end] will be back as is [linebacker] Brett Bianchi. Alex has played phenomenal defensive end for us and Brett is the other linebacker with Joe Fortwengler. Those are two captains on our team. We need to get off to a good start. We want to keep our unbeaten streak at home.”