Vikings aim to hush doubters, win third straight section title
One would be hard pressed to find a better stretch of Littlefork-Big Falls football than over the past two seasons.
Now it’s the 2009 team’s turn to take the field and expectations are mixed.
“We got something to prove, that’s for sure,” senior Jesse Steele said after practice Tuesday. Steele is one of only four returning starters, but he’s one of eight seniors who will share captain duties.
“I think to prove everyone wrong — that’s in the back of everyone’s mind,” Steele said.
The Vikings are riding a 16-game, regular season win streak and will look to make it 17 tonight in the season opener against AlBrook, a team from Section 5.
To keep the streak alive, however, the Vikings will have to get over a heavy dose of inexperience and change in personnel. Gone are five All-Conference players to graduation — Justin Franz, Brody Pritchard, Mason Imhof, Paul Imhof and Gage Klemetsen — while a sixth, Brett Burmeister, was a two-way starter. What remains won’t be blowing teams out 55-0 at halftime.
“It’s going to be a lot harder,” Steele said. “It’s not going to be a cake walk like the last couple years, but we have the potential.”
Bryce Ziemba is the lone All-Conference player returning, and he expects to play nose tackle and running back. Ziemba ran for nearly 1,200 yards last season and scored 18 times. Steele, an All-Conference honorable mention player, was second on last year’s team in receiving yards with 183. The other two returning starters — Kyle Burmeister and Aaron McGuire — played only one way with Burmeister at tight end and McGuire at safety.
Roles will expand heavily for those four this season, with the rest of the burden falling on fresh faces.
“We lost tremendous senior leadership in our seniors from 2008,” said head coach Derek Bilben, who’s entering his fifth season. “We need this year’s senior class to step up and give their team the leadership we need.”
And if the chips fall in the right places for the Vikings, they could be staring at a showdown against Mountain Iron-Buhl in the final regular season game of the season. The Vikings are coming off back-to-back St. Louis County North Conference and Section 7 9-Man titles.
“We definitely want to three-peat, that’s for sure,” Steele said. “You gotta set your goals high.”
Ziemba agreed and is hoping his inexperienced teammates can eventually help lead them to the Metrodome, a place only the 1994 Vikings have played in.
“You don’t want to look back and say you could’ve done this or could’ve done that,” Ziemba said. “We want to know when our senior year is over, we did everything we could and have no regrets.”
2009 Vikings Football Schedule
Date Opponent Time
Sept. 4 HOME vs. AlBrook 7 p.m.
Sept. 11 HOME vs. Cook 7 p.m.
Sept. 18 at Babbitt-Embarrass 3:30 p.m.
Sept. 25 at Orr 7 p.m.
Oct. 2 HOME vs. Tower-Soudan 7 p.m.
Oct. 9 at Bigfork 7 p.m.
Oct. 14 HOME vs. Cotton 7 p.m.
Oct. 20 at Mountain Iron-Buhl 7 p.m.
