A young New Ulm Cathedral football team saw their season come to a close Saturday in a 32-0 loss to a very good 9-0 Red Rock Central team in a Section 2, Nine-Player football semifinals game.

The Greyhounds ended their season at 5-5.

“Our guys gave it a good effort on both sides of the ball,” Cathedral head coach Denny Lux said. “But the big difference between the two teams came down to the line of scrimmage. We could not get much going on the offensive side of the ball. Defensively, [RRC] came off of the ball so well — they did some double-teaming, but most of it was just one-on-one and with their strength and size. It was tough to handle.”

While the season came to a close with the tough loss, Lux said he felt good about the year with how his team played against some bigger teams.

“We feel good about this past year,” said Lux. “We were always out-sized on the offensive and defensive lines, so we needed to be smarter than the other teams. We had to use our quickness and find some weak spots that we could exploit.

“Throughout the year our guys did a great job — they played so well together as a group. From Grades 7-12, all of the coaches that they have had said that the players that we have at all of these levels are very coachable — there are a lot of good things ahead of us.”

He added that the biggest improvement that he saw was in the offensive line.

“And we did not turn the ball over,” Lux said. “At the end of the year we were a plus-8 on the turnover ratio and that was the best in the district. Coach Jesse Nosbush did a great job with our defense — we were third in our section (allowing 21, 8 points a game) in points and yards given up.

“Every year he has to find new defensive ends — we never really have a guy who comes in that weighs 240 pounds, so he has to be pretty creative and he does a good job.”

Despite the season-ending loss, Cathedral will return a lot of players next season with the bulk of them at the skilled positions.

Back for their senior season next year are quarterback Eli Anderson, running back Alex Portner — who will enter next year with 1,705 career rushing yards after a junior season in which he gained 1,123 — along with his 22 career touchdowns.

Wide receiver Josh Forstner is back along with fullback Lane Ruch.

“The juniors and sophomores that we have are eager for next year,” Lux said. “They are going to put a lot of work in for next season. And these younger athletes understand that the weight room is for all of the sports — not just football — if you want to compete at any sport.”

Lux knows that he has the skilled position players back but he needs to find the movers.

“We need to find some linemen — we need to find at least two linemen,” he said. “We cannot go into next season without some back-up players.”

And Lux said he will be looking for those players.

“There are a few kids in our student body that we will try and get to come out next season,” he said. “If we can get all of the players out in the high school like we used to, that would be a huge step forward in our [future] success.”

Lux said that there are some good, young running backs coming up.

“But probably the most depth that we have coming up is at wide receivers,” he said. “We threw the ball pretty well against Red Rock on Saturday — we ran some good routes against them — and that was the first game that we really emphasized the passing game. But we may like to see some of those guys step into different roles in our other offensive sets.”

Lux said that he feels that the current junior class is going to push to play with the top teams.

“The losses that we had were to one-loss or undefeated teams, so it is time to make that step to where we are playing with those teams and taking them into the fourth quarter,” he said. “We will have decent depth next year, but the year after we will have more players and less players playing both ways.”