Hawks hoping to take flight after odd 2020 season

After playing what amounted to half of a football season in 2020, the Rib Lake-Prentice Hawks hope for a return to normalcy in 2021 and a chance to build off the competitive football they played for three of their five games last fall.

The Hawks entered last year with a lot of optimism with experience, size, new schemes they believed in and the start of a new-look Lakeland Conference they felt gave them a chance to be more competitive than they were in the Marawood.

Unfortunately, health and safety protocols amid the COVID pandemic canceled the first three games, the Hawks only played three conference games –– going 1-2 –– and ended the season 1-4 with blowout losses in games against Spring Valley and Athens.

The off-season featured more changes with the Lakeland Conference losing two teams to eight-man football and the Hawks’ program also trending in that direction.

All of that, however, is put aside now as it’s week one of a new season and a new chance to make positive things happen between the white lines.

The Hawks don’t have the deepest team around, but they have some experience to work with, especially in the skill positions offensively and in the linebacker and secondary levels on defense.

“We have quite a few seniors out there and a good group of upperclassmen,” fourth year co-head coach Jonah Campbell said Monday. “Some of those seniors haven’t necessarily been starters or played a ton. Some of them have, some of them haven’t. Having them out on the field and hopefully keeping them on the field will be key to us playing some better football mentally and fundamentally.”

The Hawks’ first chance to do that comes Friday when they host Kingdom Prep Lutheran, a second-year varsity program based out of Wauwatosa at 5 p.m. in Rib Lake. It’s the start of a fourgame homestand to start the season. The Hawks will play six home games, three at each side of the co-op.

The Hawks got their first taste of competition Friday, facing Tomahawk, Wittenberg- Birnamwood and Colby in scrimmage sessions at Colby. Typical of the scrimmage setting, Campbell said, at times, the Hawks were reminded of just how fast and intense the game is compared to practice. But, the Hawks, for the most part, achieved one of the coaching staff’s main goals for the night.

“From an offensive standpoint we didn’t put a ton of plays in, but as far as execution, kids were pretty much where they were supposed to be,” Campbell said. “It was pretty clean. It was more a matter of it being the first time seeing a live defense and game speed.

“On both sides of the ball, everybody was mentally where they needed to be, knew what they needed to do,” he added. “It was more a matter of them playing someone other than the scout team for the first time. I think a lot of teams went through that. This is your wake-up call remembering what it’s like to play football after only playing five games last year.”

A year ago, the Hawks transitioned from an option offensive scheme to more of a straight-ahead, ground-and-pound scheme that produced some solid results against Lakeland foes Ladysmith, Webster and Lake Holcombe-Cornell. However, the short season prevented them from fully finding their stride. That made getting as many repetitions as possible the goal in early practices.

“We’ve definitely gotten a lot of reps in this year,” Campbell said. “My goal offensively was to get as many reps as possible. It’s been a long time since we’ve actually played and last year it was a new offense, which was quite the time to put in a new offense. We need to get reps. It’s familiar to us because we did it last year, but it’s not so familiar because we only did it for five games. Plus we didn’t have the four-hour practices that you can have in August because school had started when we started.” Junior Michael Borchardt returns as the unit’s quarterback, while senior Sam Gumz is the backfi eld’s speedy home-run threat. He led the Hawks a year ago with 302 yards on 61 carries. Senior Jordan Yanko returns and his allout effort has shown up in practice. Junior Ty Heikkinen will get carries too after missing last year with a shoulder issue and senior Damien Peterson should get some touches as well. “Between Ty, Jordan and Sam, they’re all experienced at the varsity level,” Campbell said. “We’re hoping they can be the anchor of the offense and build off of them on other plays. I think Michael’s more confi dent to throw the ball. It’s just a matter of whether he’ll have the time. He’s