Jr. High Football Has Successful and Fun Season

The BSM junior high football team played 8 games and finished 4-3-1 this past season.  The team had thirty players and was led by Head Coach Joel Loecken and assistant coaches Greg Hoemke and Dan Sylvester.  They finished as the 5th overall team in their league and lost some close games.

Coach Greg Hoemke remarked that the team lost their best played game of the season 18-15 to St. Thomas Academy.  On the last drive for BSM, it was first and goal with three timeouts remaining and forty-two seconds left on the clock, yet they couldn’t get the winning score.  The team also lost their second game of the year 28-0 to Bloomington Middle School, and Hoemke said, “It was a real eye opener for the whole team.”  The game proved difficult because one of the Bloomington team’s players could not be tackled by anyone, and that  single player scored three touchdowns.  This taught the defense to gang tackle and the loss really benefited them in the long run.

In the team’s first playoff game the offense scored five touchdowns and the defense kept the opposing team to two.  John Whitmore had an interception and ran it back for a touchdown.  When asked to rate their overall performance on a scale of one to ten, running back Matthew Murnane rated the team’s defense a 9 and their offense an 8.  The players said that they had a really good year and really enjoy playing football.  Coach Hoemke said,  “I really enjoyed coaching this year’s team and think the players and team as a whole really improved over the course of the season.”