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Banged-up T-Birds prepare to host improved Clippers football team

WINTHROP — Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop head football coach Pat Hentges knew coming into this season that there would be a lot of big shoes to fill for his team, returning just three offensive starters from last year’s 7-3 squad.

And while he’s been coaching long enough to know injuries are a part of the game, he didn’t expect to see them impact this season quite this much.

Arguably the Thunderbirds’ (2-4) top all-around player and leader Easton Taylor is one big missing link in the chain of success for his team after an injury during the second game of the season in a 14-7 win at Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton High School. Taylor, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound senior, was one of the team’s top returners this year at running back and linebacker.

“Out of two running backs that were coming back, Easton Taylor broke his ankle early in the second game of the season and so unfortunately he’s out for the rest of the year and he was a four-year starter,” Hentges said. “So that obviously hurt us on both sides of the ball.”

The Thunderbirds did bring back Owen Swenson at running back, however, and he’s made an impact.

“Owen Swenson’s had a great sophomore year, he’s a junior this year and he’s really tried to carry much of the load,” Hentges said. “He does everything he can, he’s up there for our touchdown leader and people know that he’s one of the dudes they’ve got to stop.”

Junior running back Garrett Stegeman, when he’s been healthy this year, has been another difference maker for the GFW offense.

Unfortunately for the Thunderbirds, Stegeman was unable to play in a rough 47-6 loss to Randolph last Friday night as he was out due to concussion protocols. Randolph is the No. 16th ranked Class AA team in QRF rankings.

Hentges said his first-year starting quarterback this year, junior Cole Jacobson, was doing a terrific job of running the team, but overall the team’s inexperience has hurt in more ways than one, much like what happened in a Week 4 road game against Lester Prairie. During that game, GFW watched Lester Prairie come back and score 29 unanswered points for a 29-12 win.

“I’m telling you, at times we just, we look great,” Hentges said. “At one point we were up 12-0 against Lester Prairie and even had an 11-minute drive against them, and then our youth shows up, our inexperience shows up and then teams that have more experience certainly get on top of us.”

With many spots to fill on defense, including Taylor’s linebacker position, Hentges has been happy with the work many of the newer faces have put in to get up to speed and make an impact.

“Jose Farias is one of them along with Regie Mattes who have stepped in at linebacker,” Hentges said. “And of course we’ve had Carter Klages, who this is his first year starting, he’s a senior but has been tremendous on both sides of the ball, he plays offensive tackle for us and then also plays defensive tackle and defensive end at times for us as well.”

Now the Thunderbirds prep for a 7 p.m. Thursday night home battle against Cleveland on Senior Night, which celebrate GFW’s nine senior leaders. Cleveland is 3-3 this year, but the Clippers are starting to put things together after back-to-back, one-win seasons in 2022 and 2023.

“This is the best Cleveland football team I’ve seen,” Hentges said. “It really shows. A lot of these kids that are playing for [Cleveland head coach Erik Hermanson] played as eighth-, ninth-, 10th-graders and so that experience, and while they were getting their butts kicked, to their credit, they kept coming back, so that really shows their resiliency.

“They’re fun to watch on film, they just go out there and play and [Hermanson’s] got some good athletes in the right spot. He’s doing a tremendous job. This is a good Cleveland football team and they’ve already surprised some teams and we’re hoping they don’t surprise us because we know how good they are and we’re expecting a heck of a game.”

Hentges said he expects Cleveland to mix in the run and pass equally on Thursday.

“They spread it out, they mix it up, I would say they’re 50-50,” Hentges said. “And they run all shotgun and such. They’ve got a great quarterback, I think their starting quarterback [Blake Lyons] originally got hurt, but I believe it’s his younger brother [Carson Lyons] that’s their quarterback now, and he’s doing a tremendous job as a sophomore. He’s got great feet, great ability and definitely shows that he trusts the guys around him.”

As for the Thunderbirds, their potent Power-T run game full of hesitation, cutbacks and misdirection has tricked teams for many years under Hentges. That run-heavy game plan, which even though is expected, is still hard for many teams to stop.

However, depending upon who the Thunderbirds have available Thursday, the line and backs will need to be ready for a challenge, especially because Mattes, another running back for the Thunderbirds, is also questionable to play due to injury.

“Our offensive line, we don’t do a lot of technical things, we do a lot of — we’ve got to be aggressive,” Hentges said. “We figure it’s a lot easier to press the brake than press the gas and we want them pressing the gas. From a running back standpoint, we practice our steps every day, many of the drills you see in our pre-game are drills that we practice every day.”

Ultimately, Hentges knows he and his coaching staff have to be patient with his players, especially since many of them are first-year starters that sometimes have learned things the hard way.

“You have to really be patient, I hope that’s what we’ve been doing and then also really listen to the players, too, and kind of see from their perspectives,” Hentges said. “The seniors we graduated last year, three-quarters of them played as sophomores. So they had been through it, they played with some really good athletes as sophomores and were able to continue their version of the program, and that’s what these guys are still doing here.

“Like I said, there’s times we’ve looked really good and just our youth comes out, our inexperience comes out … We’ve had way too many fumbles offensively this year and not enough takeaways defensively. Football comes down to those kinds of things, along with tackling and stuff, just stuff we need to make sure to continue to focus on.”

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