LITTLE CHUTE (NBC 26) — The Little Chute football team is ready to try and run it back to Camp Randall.
After a state runner-up finish last year, the Mustangs are hoping their season ends with a gold ball.
"Obviously the loss sucked last year, can't hold back this year," senior quarterback and defensive end Jaden Hermsen said.
Coming off a heartbreaking loss at the hands of Winneconne in the Division 4 state title game, there's one word to describe the 1-0 Mustangs, who took down Xavier 42-0 in Week 1.
"Deep," said senior running back and linebacker Reece Joten. "We got a lot of guys who have experience on the field and I think that with guys in the right spot we can do a lot of good."
Hermsen and Joten combined for over 2,700 rushing yards and 37 touchdowns on the ground last year. But in this offense, anyone can get a carry—and they're completely fine with sharing the load.
Case in point: nine different Mustangs combined for 293 yards and five touchdowns last week.
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"It doesn't revolve around you if your whole team isn't successful, then you don't look so good yourself," Hermsen said. "I mean, that's kind of how it is around here."
"There's going to be games where the fullback has a ton of carries, there's going to be games where the quarterback has a ton of carries," head coach Mark Krommenacker added. "It's all based on what the defense has given us."
The players say this year Krommenacker and his staff are holding them to a higher standard.
"(The) coaches reminded us the whole summer that we're number one in the rankings and that we need to push even harder than we did last year and that we got the standards higher than it was last year so now we do extra like even more than we did last year," Joten said. "We do like either one more rep of something we did last year, one more set so that's what coach has been doing a good job of keeping us in line with that."
As they eye going one step further this year, Krommenacker says they need to have a WIN mentality.
"(WIN) stands for 'what's important now.' So just focusing on where we are right now," Krommenacker said. "So like right here it's this practice. We have to have a better practice than yesterday if we're going to compete Thursday, so we're just really focused on the moment. That's the only thing we can control and the rest of the stuff's going to take care of itself."
The Mustangs have a huge matchup Thursday night as they host Fox Valley Lutheran, who is coming off a blowout 42-0 win over Kewaunee.
