Getting there early
9 a.m. starts suit the Huskies just fine
In most of the discussions I had last week about Jackson County Central’s upcoming state semifinal football game the first thing mentioned was not the quality of the opponent (Eden Valley-Watkins), but the 9 a.m. kickoff.
The prevailing thought was that 9 a.m. is too early to play football.
And while it is certainly out of the ordinary, Minnesota teams fortunate enough to still be playing in mid-November have been playing morning football for 30-plus years.
In fact, when there were six classes of football, the semifinal round was split into two days of six games apiece, with the first game starting at a.m.
Since going to seven classes, the semifinals were spread to three days, with a format of one day of four games starting at 10:30 a.m. and two days of five games starting at 9 a.m.
Playing a high school football game at 9 a.m. is out of the ordinary.
So is playing a high school football game in a $1 billion domed stadium with 66,000 seats. That’s approximately 13 times the combined populations of Jackson, Lakefield and Sioux Valley.
An option to avoid playing football at 9 a.m. is that your football gear has been turned in and you’re getting ready for wrestling, basketball or hockey.
It’s difficult to imagine that any of the Jackson County Central or Eden Valley-Watkins players on that U.S. Bank Stadium floor Friday morning would choose that second option.
This is the fourth straight year that JCC has played a semifinal game at 9 a.m.
There are advantages to being in the first game of the day.
For the players anyway.
For Hall of Fame coaches who are much better at coaching football than they are at packing for an overnight trip, not so much.
“I’m not a big traveler,” said JCC coach Tom Schuller. “I get up (Friday) and I don’t have my toothbrush. I don’t have my shaving kit. I’m like ‘holy moses, I didn’t have anything packed. Deb (his wife) luckily covered me. It was a scramble, but I made it through it.”
But once everyone got to the stadium everything went smoothly. And I’ve said numerous times through the years; Jackson County Central football leads the state in getting to games early.
“You want to get here (U.S. Bank Stadium) really early,” Schuller said. “We got our full warmup time, which is really important to us. We were all the troops together, people taped, breakfast eaten. The film was watched last (Thursday) night, all that stuff was taken care of.
“Once you get here and are on the field warming up, it’s just a game. We’ve done it before. Yeah, it’s a big game but I think once you get to that point, and we have such experience in this, instincts take over. They’ve done it a lot of times.”
The dynamics will change at Prep Bowl next week.
JCC and Goodhue will play the third game of the day so the Huskies won’t be able to take the field early.
And once the Class 4A game between Kasson-Mantorville and Orono ends, they’ll be crowded in the tunnel anxious to get going but there will be an awards ceremony, pictures to be taken and MSHSL personnel herding people from one place to another. A lot of chaos and only about half the time as usual for warmups.
But the veteran JCC coaching staff has been through it quite a few times and so have most of the players.
And while I didn’t ask about the itinerary for the next week it likely will be a one-day trip so the Hall of Fame head coach shouldn’t have to lean on his wife to be clean shaven for the TV cameras.
