NEW ULM — Week Two of the high school football season on the local level sees one New Um team — the Minnesota Valley Lutheran Chargers — at home for a Southwest District, East Subdistrict Thursday night encounter with Wabasso in a meeting at 8:15 p.m. at Johnson Field.

Meanwhile, both New Ulm Cathedral and New Ulm High School have road tests on Friday at Sleepy Eye and Worthington respectively.

WABASSO (1-0) AT MINNESOTA VALLEY LUTHERAN (0-1) THURSDAY 8:15 P.M. JOHNSON FIELD.

The Chargers are hoping to rebound from a 34-12 road loss last week to Tracy-Milroy-Balaton and will have to contend with a Wabasso team that went into Springfield and hung a 34-0 loss on the Tigers.

“That was a big win for them,” Chargers’ head coach Jim Buboltz said. “To do that in their first game, Wabasso executed pretty well.”

Buboltz said that the Rabbits do not use and smoke and mirrors to get the job done.

“They come straight at you — they will tell you that the are coming straight at you — and you have to be able to stop them. It is just smash-mouth football so we need to be able to tackle well.”

Buboltz said that last week, his team did not play bad defense last week in the first half.

“We just did not score when we were in the red zone. We had some big plays last week but the big thing for us is that we need to be more consistent in our offensive drives. We need to maintain longer drives. We can make the big plays, we have big-play people and we spread people out but it has to be more than that.

“We moved the ball OK but we have to maintain drives and keep the clock going,” he said.

Buboltz said that his team needs to be more physical.

“And we are going to have to be more physical each game now. We have games against next week against Adrian, Springfield and [New Ulm] Cathedral. Starting the season like we have without the hitting in practice may have hampered some of our defense a little. We need to be physical.”

MVL Activities Director Craig Morgan said that MVL is allocated 150 of the 250 vouchers for the game. MVL fans with a voucher can enter at the main gate while Wabasso fans will enter by the concession stand by the baseball field. Spectators must wear masks when entering or leaving the facility and when social distancing is not possible. Mask use for all spectators is highly recommended at all times. Spectators must be separated by at least six feet (front, back, left and right. Fans do not need to be masked when they or maintain six-foot distancing when they are with immediate family.

MVL fans will use the Johnson Park indoor restroom while Wabasso fans will use porta-pottys located on their side of the field. There wil be no concessions sold at the game or allowed to be brought in and fans are asked to leave the facility immediately after the game.

NEW ULM CATHEDRAL (1-0) AT SLEEPY EYE (0-1) FRIDAY 7 P.M. SLEEPY EYE

New Ulm Cathedral head coach Denny Lux said that the Indians, who fell 35-12 last week at home to Murray County Central, are led by third-year starter Keegan Heidersheidt at quarterback.

“He does a good job of running their offense and he knows what he is doing,” Lux said. “They are real solid offensively with him at quarterback.”

Lux said that the Indians like to run the jet sweep, the rocket sweep and a lot of counters. “So our defensive ends and outside linebackers are going to get tested with all of their misdirection.”

On defense, Lux said that the Indians, under defensive co-ordinator Joe Hoffman, has given the Cathedral offense a different kind of scheme.

“We are going to have to be prepared for a different fronts.”

Cathedral is coming off an impressive 37-19 win over Adrian last week but Lux thinks that his team still needs improvement in some aspects of their game.

“We need to improve on our down blocks,” he said. “We are pulling guards and we do not want them to get hit when they are pulling.”

The Greyhounds have depth at running back with Luke Gieseke, Jon Adema and Levi Jakes. And now they will get running back Eric Furth to add to their offensive arsenal in the backfield.

“We are fortunate to have four guys who can run the football and we are trying to find the right combination in practice for our Michigan T offense and also with the Wing T and see which guys should be on the field for those offenses.”

Lux also thought that quarterback Sam Knowles, who played his first football game in over two years, threw the ball well and also was a force on the ground.

“He is a big guy but he still can put a move on a defensive back. He brings a lot of different things to the game for us.”

NEW ULM HIGH SCHOOL (0-1) AT WORTHINGTON (0-1) FRIDAY 7 P.M. WORTHINGTON.

Both teams are coming off first-game losses with New Ulm falling 49-16 to Marshall and Worthington dropping a 39-14 contest to Mankato East. Worthington was scheduled to play Fairmont in their first game but because Fairmont is Distance Learning, they cannot play football.

“Worthington likes to throw the ball,” New Ulm coach Eric Kauffmann said. “They will throw the ball 85 percent of the time and they will spread you out. And they burned [Mankato] East for two long touchdown passes last week.”‘

Kauffmann said that the Trojans are basically a passing team which has forced the Eagles to make some changes in their defensive secondary.

“We will have some kids back this week that were quarantined so we get back a couple of linemen. But defensively we will not be in a cover-three like we were against Marshall,” he said. “We will be in a cover-two or cover-four against Worthington because we know they like to throw the ball.”

Offensively, Kauffmann thought that his team did a lot of things well as well as a lot of things not so good against Marshall.

“It was our first game and unfortunately playing a good team like Marshall is not good,” he said. “After watching the film of the game we did some things that we can get better at. Overall it was not horrible for our first game.”

Kauffmann said that the focus this week in practice has been understanding the defense and reading the keys.

“If our defense reads their keys we will not have many problems up front. We need to read our keys and we need to understand offensively that when Cole [Ranweiler] went down and was cramping up our other kids need to come in and handle the pressure and playing another position. This week in practice we want to make sure that we get a lot of guys get a lot of reps at other positions so they can be prepared.

“And if we want to win Friday we cannot let them throw the ball all over the field on us.”