The fifth week of the high school football season for local teams has Minnesota Valley Lutheran and New Ulm Cathedral on the road, while New Ulm High School is at home for their Homecoming game for Friday night games.

The Chargers of MVL head to Jackson to take on the unbeaten Huskies, while Cathe-dral heads to Nicollet to face the Raiders.

The New Ulm Eagles look to get back on the winning track when they host Worthington at New Ulm High School.

All games have 7 p.m. kickoffs.

WORTHINGTON (0-4) AT NEW ULM HIGH SCHOOL (1-3) 7 P.M., FRIDAY, NEW ULM HIGH SCHOOL

While the Trojans come in winless this season to face the Eagles, they have had re- cent success against New Ulm.

Last year the Trojans defeated the Eagles 10-3 in Worthington.

“They are a team that so far this season has struggled,” New Ulm head coach Derek Lieser said. “But I know that they have had our number the last couple of years — in my coaching career here we are 1-2 against them. We are coming off a couple of disappointing losses, so we have to find ways to find positives. We need to fix our mistakes. If we fix our mistakes and keep morale high, we can turn things around.”

Lieser said that he wants to continue to establish the Eagles running game Friday. “We did some nice things last week against Belle Plaine on the ground,” Lieser said. “We also have to minimize negative yardage plays — that can be pre-snap penalties or alignment issues. I had to call a timeout last week when we were not lined up correctly — we have to also eliminate taking sacks on first down and getting into second-and-long situations.”

Lieser said that his team has put a lot of time and resources into their run game to make sure that they have a lot of schematic answers.

“We want to establish the run and hope- fully that will open up some things in the pass game for us,” Lieser said. “We have been re- ally close in our play-action game where we have had guys open. We are playing three inexperienced underclassmen linemen — we need to make sure they know what their pass responsibility is of them.”

The Trojans will show a mixed and some- times and ad-libbed offense.

“They show a little bit of being under center and also the shotgun,” Lieser said. “They have also had a couple of big plays where it is not a designed play, it is their quarterback scrambling around and trying to find a guy breaking free in the secondary. Pass coverage has to hold up for a while. Half of their big

plays come that way.” Sometimes people look at comparative scores of teams they are

playing.

New Ulm defeated Austin 44-7, while the Trojans lost 14-13 to them.

“If we come to play like we did in the first half against Austin — don’t worry about the name on the front of their jerseys — and if we take care of what we can control — which is the 48 minutes of the game — things are going to take care of themselves.”

NEW ULM CATHEDRAL (1-3) AT NICOLLET (1-3) 7 P.M., FRIDAY, NICOLLET HIGH SCHOOL

The Raiders enter their meeting with the Greyhounds as a team that can score points as they are averaging 34.5 points per game, but also give up a lot in 47 points per game.

Cathedral offensively is scoring 16.5 points per game and allowing just over 22 points per game.

“The first thing you notice about Nicollet is that their quarterback [Henry Oscarson] is patient,” Cathedral head coach Denny Lux said. “He has been back there before and he does not get rattled — he will keep looking and try and find someone underneath. Nicol- let has a tradition with nine-man football and scoring points. I know that coach [Jesse] Nosbush is going to work hard to slow down that offense.”

Lux said that the Raiders are pretty much a throwing team.

“They do not get into a lot of different offensive sets, but they do run crossing routes and that can give linebackers some trouble,” Lux said. “So we are going to have to get pressure on their quarterback — our defensive ends are going to have to work hard up- field hard and fast and force him out of the pocket.”

Lux said that he was very pleased with the way that his team played against Wa- basso last week with their defensive line and linebackers.

“That has been our forte when we were solid over the years, so maybe we have to look at getting back to the physical and disciplined type of play.”

He also thinks that offensively the Greyhounds need to get running back Alex Port-ner the ball more out in the open.

“And then we have [running back] Adrian Henry back and he has given us that threat up the middle,” Lux said. “We are going to work on some things this week that we feel defines us better. Our best offense was running straight and with Henry and [Lane] Ruch ahead of Portner that is a pretty solid way to look at things.”

Lux also felt that last week’s game against Wabasso was the Greyhounds’ best played game of the sea- son.

“We knew going into the season that our first four games were going to be a real test and we are definitely going in the right direction.”

MINNESOTA VALLEY LUTHERAN (0-4) AT JACKSON COUNTY CENTRAL(4-0). 7 P.M., FRIDAY, JCC HIGH SCHOOL

When you look at the first four games that the Huskies have played, the first thing that comes to your mind is total domination.

JCC has outscored opponents by an average score of 59-13 and have put up 61 and 77 points in games this season.

Last week in a 48-6 win over Pipestone, JCC held the Arrows to 69 total yards of offense.

“I think that they are the best football team in the state of Minnesota in any class,” Chargers head coach Jim Buboltz said. “They are big, fast, strong, they do a lot of things right. … They look amazing right now.”

Buboltz said that he’s preparing his team for the Huskies with one simple play at a time.

“You can’t be thinking about doing this or that, you simply need to say to yourself that this is what I need to do right now to win this one play,” Buboltz said. “We have to simplify things as much as you can and keep things as positive as you can. You can’t be trying to trick them because they are so fundamentally strong that that will not work. We have to be quick in what we want to run.”

Buboltz said that he is not going to have an opening “script” of plays for this game.

“I am just going to see

how the guys just open up in general,” he said. “We have been down to Jackson four times and not one of them has gone well, so in my mind it is, ‘Lets just get through one play at a time and one series at a time.'”

Buboltz feels that it is more of a mental challenge for any team playing JCC.

“Everyone knows about Roman (Voss, JCC quarterback who signed to play college football with the Minnesota Gophers) and yet they just have a complete class of seniors that have been together now for four years of success. They are pretty good and that is an understatement.”