File photo by Ari Selvey Sleepy Eye United’s Talan Helget (9) carries the ball during a Week 1 home football matchup with Yellow Medicine East on Aug. 29 at Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s High School.

SLEEPY EYE — The prep football season is still just getting going, but the Wabasso Rabbits are already in the thick of their schedule.

After opening the season with an 18-8 home win Aug. 29 over MACCRAY that snapped a 19-game losing streak, the Rabbits were shut out on the road 29-0 against Russell-Tyler-Ruthton last Friday.

Things don’t get any easier for the Rabbits as they travel to Sleepy Eye High School this Friday for a 7 p.m. matchup against Sleepy Eye United.

In the Rabbits’ loss to RTR, they allowed two special teams touchdowns and turned the ball over twice.

According to Wabasso head coach Joe Kemp, the Rabbits, who will also have the tall task of returning home in Week 4 to host the Springfield Tigers, aren’t at the level yet where they can afford costly mistakes.

“I would say at this point of the season where we’re at now, we’re not probably to that level where we can afford to make mistakes and we probably made a lot more of them last Friday against a better opponent, so that made things stand out,” coach Kemp said. “It’s not that we didn’t give another great effort again, we played hard, we played physical, but a better opponent and, obviously, that’s who you’re facing again this week. You keep facing better opponents, you can’t make those little mistakes because they blow up in your face a lot bigger.”

SEU, also now 1-1 on the year, is hungry to get back in the win column during Homecoming week after a 38-14 loss on the road to Tracy-Milroy-Balaton last Friday.

TMB quarterback Trevor Smith threw for 303 yards and four touchdowns against SEU.

“Tracy is definitely a very good football team,” SEU head coach Brent Kucera said. “They have a college-caliber quarterback, so that definitely throws some challenges our way. He played amazing, I can’t take anything away from that kid. They put us in some pressure situations. We put ourselves in some tough situations, we had some simple miscues on both sides of the ball. We just need to clean things up everywhere.”

SEU quarterback Carson Uecker finished with 127 yards passing and a TD in the loss, but SEU was also hurt by penalties, committing 11 of them for 95 yards.

Wabasso, meanwhile, saw its starting quarterback Jack Burns injure his hand early in the game and finish completing 3 of 13 passes for 12 yards and two interceptions. Drew Kemp, coach Kemp’s son, then took some reps with the offense later in the game and completed 3 of 3 passes for 27 yards.

“The reason Jack struggled was he broke his hand early in the game,” coach Kemp said. “It might have been second or third pass of the game, he hit his thumb on a helmet. So we knew it was swollen, we didn’t know the severity of it, so he stayed in.

“Jack is usually a pretty reliable passer, and that probably explains what his numbers were. So we gave Drew some reps with the first team, so we’ll see a lot more Drew this week.”

Kucera said he expects to see some similar things from the Rabbits in coach Kemp’s first year back as head coach after a three-year hiatus.

“He’s doing similar things to what he did back when he was head coach,” Kucera said. “He does some I formation, he does some unbalanced, misdirection stuff, he’ll spread you out four receivers, so he’s doing Joe Kemp stuff.

“So going back and looking, dusting off the Wabasso game plan from years ago and revisiting that a little bit because I know some old tricks he’s going to try and pull on us.”

Regardless of what tricks coach Kemp has up his sleeve for SEU, Kucera said there are several things he wants to see from his team this Friday. Perhaps the biggest keys, however, will be taking care of the ball and not getting too comfortable on offense.

“We have to be more physical, we can’t turn the ball over,” Kucera said. “We have to be tougher up front and we have to cover our guys in the secondary, that was a big issue for us. The biggest thing we’ve had issues [with] last year rolling into this year is we start out well, things are going too well offensively and we tend to step on the brakes a little bit and we’ve got to figure out how to stop that from happening. We have to keep our foot on the pedal and keep rolling and not slow up at all.”

As the Rabbits prep for a tough couple of weeks, starting with this Friday’s trip to Sleepy Eye, coach Kemp said how his players respond in the face of adversity will be important.

“Sleepy Eye from what you see and what you know of Springfield, these two opponents are going to put a lot of stress on us as a team and as a group,” coach Kemp said. “Sleepy Eye’s aggressive. I know [coach Kucera] from coaching against him many years ago and they’re going to come at you and they’re going to hit you in the face. One of the things we talked about last week was how we react to that … and we have to come back and react to that and be better with it.

“I think that is probably the thing that hurt us most the last week. I know Sleepy Eye is going to come even harder at us, that’s just the way [Kucera’s] teams play. He’s got some kids out there, that [Talan] Helget kid, and some running backs and they’re going to be physical and we’ve got to respond to that better this week than we did last week.”

LIKE FATHER,

LIKE SON

Burns, a sophomore, is expected to miss substantial time this season, opening the door for freshman Drew Kemp to take the starting quarterback role. Going from a young quarterback to an even younger one isn’t easy, but nobody knows Drew Kemp’s personality and mindset quite like the man he calls his dad and head coach.

“He’s grown up in the house here, so he knows the offense every bit as much as I do,” coach Kemp said of his son. “He’s kind of a sports nut, so he knows what he’s doing with everything, so I’m not concerned with that, it’s just that you’re a freshman and you want to give them some easy reads early and get the confidence. … We’re still looking big picture for our program. Those are things you’ve got to concern yourself with everybody that’s out on the field.”

WHO TO WATCH

SEU’s 6-foot-4 tight end Talan Helget is a QB’s best friend and has been a reliable target for Uecker so far through two games. His first game, a 28-0 shutout over Yellow Medicine East at Sleepy Eye St. Mary’ High School, he had two receptions for 121 yards and a touchdown. Last week, Helget had another 85 yards receiving and a TD reception.

For Wabasso, while Calvin Hanna got most of the Rabbits’ touches last Friday, RTR didn’t allow him to do much with them as he finished with 16 carries for 29 yards. Kaysen Harms, however, rushed for 38 yards on just five carries for Wabasso, one week after taking seven carries for 92 yards and a touchdown against MACCRAY. Harms will likely draw some attention this Friday.