New Ulm High School’s 21-7 win over Tri-City United Friday night — the Eagles’ third straight win of the season — was a costly one as starting quarterback Preston Holberg went down with an upper-body injury.

It has now been revealed that he will miss the rest of the season due to that injury he sustained midway through the second quarter.

Holberg had run for a 25-yard touchdown in the first quarter of that game and had passed for six touchdowns this season.

“Preston has been lost for the season due to this injury,” New Ulm head coach Derek Lieser said Saturday. “He will be converting to a different role on the sideline and helping out our team in other ways.”

With the loss of Holberg, Lieser said that the Eagles’ offense is going to have to be creative in how to fill Holberg’s shoes.

“That is going to be a tall task because of the versatility and skill set that he brought for us — we really have to be creative with that. We saw a little bit of that Friday with Zach Hubbard taking some snaps in the Wildcat set. I think that we are going to have sophomore Noah Mertz and freshman Owen Castleman both get a ton of reps this week in practice to get ourselves the best chance to be prepared — we will spend some extra time on the offensive side of the ball this week in practice.

“We feel like we are in a good spot defensively. We just need to take care of the football and limit our mistakes and rely on the strength of our team which is running the football.”

Lieser said that there could be different game scenarios for different quarterbacks.

“We will try and come up with a good game plan as a coaching staff,” he said. “Both quarterbacks have to be ready for whatever we throw at them and also based on how the flow of the game is going. I could see a scenario in which both of them are taking snaps on Friday night in Worthington.

“So both kids are going to have to be ready to go. We have to have kids step up and do the best that they can.”

The loss of Holberg also creates a hole in the Eagles’ defensive backfield at safety.

“That is the other question mark,” Lieser said. “George Gag, a sophomore, came in after Preston got hurt and did a really nice job, but he is dealing with a little bit of an injury of his own. Juniors Ryan Rathmann and Braxton Kiecker will be our options at safety. This is testing our depth and that was something that we were excited about coming into this season — now that depth will really be tested.

“Preston was a two-way starter for us — he was our quarterback of our defense as well. This was his third year starting at safety for us.”

The 3-0 Eagles are at Worthington at 7 p.m. this Friday night.

GREYHOUNDS

DISAPPOINTED, NOT SURPRISED BY RRC

New Ulm Cathedral head football coach Denny Lux said there were no surprises from Red Rock Central Friday night in the Greyhounds’ 34-18 road loss to the Falcons.

“They played like I figured in that they would come out and run right at us,” he said. “They have always been real physical. And their running back Carter Therkilsen is probably the best running back that I have seen in a while. He is a 5-foot-9, 195-pound junior who is built for power, but he also has a lot of speed. We had a tough time bringing him down, he got a lot of extra yards after the first one or two guys hit him — he kept his legs turning.”

Therkilsen finished the game with 28 rushes for 236 yards and four touchdowns.

Lux said that the Greyhounds did not face him last year.

“He was injured last season as a sophomore,” Lux said. He really was the difference-maker in the game.”

Lux said that the 34 points his defense gave up was a byproduct of long drives.

“[The long drives] were frustrating and that was their game plan,” he said. “They were satisfied with 4 or 5 yards at a time, but every so often Carter would break off a long run.”

He said that he thought that his team was prepared and played better in the second half Friday.

Lux also said his team did a number of good things on offense.

“We did throw the ball more but that was because we had to,” he said. “That game was a struggle for us establishing any of our offensive sets — we had to jump around with different sets to figure out what would work the best for us.”

Lux said that the Greyhounds did lose running back Jaden Helget midway the game to an elbow injury.

“That pulled us away from some of our Wing-T sets because he is our fullback there.”

Lux was happy with the performance of running back Josh Bentler Friday.

“He had a great 75-yard touchdown run — he always plays hard and he plays both ways,” Lux said. “We are still trying to figure out our identity on offense. Are we a power-running team, a finesse-running type of running team or are we a throwing team?

“That is what we really have to look at this week in practice and make a decision. If you watched our first three games, you have seen different aspects of our offense. We have to narrow that down in practice.”

CHARGERS LOSE TOUGH GAME

Going into Friday night’s road contest at Le Sueur-Henderson, Minnesota Valley Lutheran head football coach Jim Buboltz was a little leery as his team faced an 0-2 Giants team that had lost two close games to two unbeaten teams.

“We knew this was going to be a tough going,” Buboltz said. “I really felt that Le Sueur should have won their first two games. We knew that we were seeing a good team on film and if they put everything together that they would be pretty formidable — and they put it all together especially in the first half.”

The Giants held a 21-0 lead at halftime en route to a 31-20 win, handing the Chargers their first loss of the season.

“They ran the ball pretty well but they also were able to mix it up pretty good,” Buboltz said. “They kept us off-balance on defense. I thought that we had a good defensive plan going into the game but yet they found weaknesses in it immediately.”

Buboltz said that the Chargers had opportunities in the first half to get back into the game.

“But we got stopped inside the 5-yard line on the last play before halftime — a score there would have been nice — and then get the ball back to start the second half and come back and score like we did on that first possession of the second half.

“We were constantly going uphill Friday and we eventually ran out of time. Our guys gave everything they had.”

Buboltz felt that it was more of what the Chargers were not doing than what the Giants were taking away.

“We dropped a couple of balls — our tackling was not as good as it was in our first two games — things did not come together for us Friday.”

Offensively the Chargers had just 41 yards rushing in the game, with the scoring provided by MVL quarterback Kaden Peterson, who threw for 237 yards and three touchdowns.

“We only ran the ball for those 41 yards in the game,” Buboltz said. “But we discovered that we can throw the ball. We had not thrown the ball well in the first couple of games, so now we know that we have that in us. Now we need to find a way to balance them and keep defenses off-balance.”

Buboltz added that the Chargers need to do a better job of tackling.

And the Chargers, now 2-1, have a tough schedule coming up. They play at 3-0 Luverne Friday before hosting a currently 3-0 Pipestone team on September 27 and then traveling to Jackson County Central to face the now 3-0 Huskies, who in three games have outscored opponents 169-7 on Saturday, Oct. 6.