Photo courtesy of Rhonda Larson Springfield’s Caleb Hauger (34) lines up on defense before a snap during a prep football game earlier this fall. He was unanimously selected as the 2020 All-Journal Defensive Player of the Year.

SPRINGFIELD — Playing behind a trio of talented linebackers his sophomore year, Springfield’s Caleb Hauger was able to learn a lot and put that information to use this past season.

As a junior, Hauger rose to the challenge of becoming a leader in a long line of talented Springfield linebackers. Hauger finished the 2020 shortened season with 96 tackles in eight games, which ranked him among the state’s best. He helped the Tigers win the Section 3A third-place game after the team lost 14 players from last year’s team to graduation. Hauger was voted as the 2020 All-Journal Defensive Player of the Year by The Journal’s Sports Writing staff. With another year to go, he’s already working towards adding to that tackles total next year.

With so many talented players from last year’s team gone, someone had to step up for the Tigers. Hauger was one of them.

“We had a lot of talent with that big senior class and this year it was my turn to be a leader,” Hauger said.

At 5-foot-8 and 165 pounds, Hauger is far from being one of the biggest players on the field. But that didn’t seem to stop him.

“Caleb Hauger is one of the toughest football players, pound-for-pound, that I’ve ever coached,” head coach Bob Fink said.

It was a little bit of a struggle at first with new faces in new places for Springfield. But the Tigers figured it out quickly and got rolling.

“I guess we just needed to bond, because most of these guys haven’t really played much and the experience wasn’t there,” Hauger said. “Once we bonded as much as we could and worked together on the field, I guess we just meshed.”

The Tigers opened the season with a 31-0 loss to Wabasso. After that, they beat Adrian, New Ulm Cathedral and Minnesota Valley Lutheran before dropping a heartbreaker to Murray County Central. They then defeated Tracy-Milroy-Balaton in the regular-season finale and defeated Sleepy Eye and Russel-Tyler-Ruthton in the playoffs. They potentially would’ve met Wabasso for the section crown, something that they wanted.

“We were definitely peaking at the end of the season and I know all of the players wanted a chance at Wabasso again, but I guess that just never happened,” Hauger said.

It was a strange year for Hauger, who started the fall season participating in another sport because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I actually started the year doing cross-country before football because I didn’t know if football was going to happen, but I wanted to do a sport,” he said.

Because of the pandemic, Hauger learned a lot about himself.

“I think I learned with how to make the most of what you have and overcome adversity,” Hauger said. “Just do the best with what we have and when we have it.”

As a sophomore last year, Hauger looked up to the talented group of seniors who occupied the linebacking positions. That group played a lot over the last three years and Hauger wanted to copy their work ethic.

“One of them was Mason Rummel and I really looked up to him, same with the [Ivan and Nolan] Hovland brothers,” Hauger said. “They just pushed everybody to be the best they could be and we really got a lot out of practices with them.”

He said he’s already planning to work towards next year.

“I’m really excited because I know a lot of us are going to get in the weight room and try to get big for next year,” Hauger said. “I know we’ve bonded pretty tight for next year and we have quite a bit of players so it should be a good thing for sure.”