It was a beautiful autumn October 5th Monday evening and the JV Rebels went on the road to Traer to take on the Redhawks of North Tama. We knew we needed to be ready because North Tama will always give you their best effort. We had been cruising along the last couple of weeks with a couple of blow outs and we had been playing pretty good, inspired football. We had been focused and our execution had been pretty good. We needed to keep that going heading into the home stretch of the 2014 season. We kicked off and shut NT down on their first drive. We took over and mounted a decent drive that resulted in a touch down after about six minutes elapsed off of the clock. We led 7-0 after 1 quarter and it was truly an ugly first quarter. We struggled on both sides of the ball toward the end of quarter one and well into quarter two. We scored two late TD’s to go up 21-0 at the half. We added 2 more scores in the third to go up 37-0 and we walked away with a 37 -7 win moving us to 4-1 on the year. Parker Bown had two rushing touchdown and booted a PAT’s on his way to 159 yards on 13 carries. Hunter Lott had one rushing TD and a passing TD to Matt Roeding. Walker Thede, Tyler Pierce, Erik Knaack, and Josh Saak also had grabs for us. Gage Murty added 58 yards rushing and a touchdown followed by Owen Beach with 29 yards and Joseph Baugus with 22. Dmitriy Strohbehn added a PAT run and Matt Johannsen had 1 rush for a couple of yards to round out our offensive stats. The Rebel defense was led by Thomas Mussig with 6 tackles. Tyler added 4, Slade Wager, Josh, Gage, Parker, Dmitriy, and Jed Peterson 3, Hunter, Matt, and Rhett Barnes 2 each, and Erik, Bryce Schick, and Walker had 1 tackle each. Alex Tscherter recovered a fumble and Matt and Erik each had a pick for our defense. This football team had been improving every time out on the field. Tonight was not an improvement. We walked onto the field not focused and not ready to play football at a high level. It was apparent before we left Reinbeck in the bus. Many players had forgotten part of their gear for the game or had chosen to just not bring some things with them. We thought we would walk right into Traer and the game would be over. We had 13 penalties for about 110 yards. We missed assignments on both sides of the ball. Our focus and intensity was just not there and that is a problem for us. We took a few steps backwards on this night. We came out on top on the scoreboard but our progress scoreboard says something different. We can get all of this fixed. This group of young men have a ton of potential. They have to work at it every day. They need the mentality of no one will out work us or be more focused than we will be. We hate to be negative but even the kids said last night it was not their best effort. We are in week 6 of the season and effort, focus, and execution should not be an issue at this point in the season. We all have learned a lesson from the North Tama game and we are moving forward. We will continue to get better and keep the Rebel tradition moving forward. We now what is expected and we will live up to that. Our next action will be Monday October 20 at home against our county rivals, the Spartans from Grundy Center. Game time is scheduled for 6:00 pm.