Football looks to bounce back against Wildcats

After coming off a loss in their season opener, the HHS football team will host the Waconia Wildcats in their home opener at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 8th.

Last Thursday, the Royals fell to the Apple Valley Eagles, 7-27. During the game, the offense couldn’t click, they will need to find their spark when they face the Wildcats. The Royals defense, on the other hand, looked very strong after the opening two drives, coming up with some big stops including two turnovers, one interception and one fumble recovery.

The Royals will want to keep that going in hopes that it ignites the offense.

“We kept our energy and intensity up in a hard fight. It was especially tough to keep that up when the offense was struggling, but we’re gonna continue that by focusing up this week each day in practice and take the correct steps to prepare for our game this Friday,” Matthias Harris, senior, said.

A big thing to watch for this upcoming game is the Quarterback situation for the Royals. According to last week, there is still no clear picture on who is the Quarterback. James Klecker, junior, started the game but Connor Fitzgerald, senior, rotated in throughout the game.

“It’s still a head to head contest with how we both played last game and I believe it’s tight,” Klecker said. “All that matters right now is that we are both pushing each other to keep competing and do our best to push the team during games.”

Both players will want to improve their performances in this next game. They each had two interceptions and both struggled moving the ball on offense. Klecker was able to throw a touchdown pass for their only score of the game, but him and running back Jadon Washington, junior, had some miscommunication deep in enemy territory that led to a fumble.

“This week we’ve been focusing on the fine details of each and every play. I believe that’s where we lacked most against Apple Valley and we think we have a good shot at fixing that this week,” Klecker said.

This game, the Royals look to get their first win of the season and move up to .500.