After a successful season, the football team started the section tournament off strong with a 49-21 win against Southwest.

According to head coach Ben Wolfe, the team was very prepared going into the game on Oct. 23.

“I think preparation was a big factor,” said Wolfe. “Physically our kids were prepared from a lot of offseason work and mentally from a good understanding of what (Southwest) was going to try and do.”

According to junior Aaron Ellingson, the team didn’t have a great start to the game but still managed to win by 28 points.

“Offensively, turnovers were big. We started out the game with a fumble and an interception but defense did a great job limiting the big plays to give us a good chance,” Ellingson said.

According to Wolfe, winning this game was a big success for the team. He said it helped to boost the team’s overall confidence and moral but in order to keep winning, they can’t stop working hard at practices.

“It always feels good to get the results you’re driving for every week. Our goal this week was to beat them and go 1-0 and it definitely feels good to do that,” said Wolfe. “At the same time it’s also important to realize that we have another game, so we have to stay humble and prepare for our next opponent as well.”

The team has some things to work on before the next game, including anticipating what the other team will do, according to junior Jack Townsend.

“For the next game, we just need to understand what they’re coming at us with and try to be better at tackling,” Townsend said.

According to Ellingson, this has been a good season so far despite losing many talented seniors last year.

“The season’s been going great. We have a similar record (to last year) and a lot of different guys are playing — we had a lot of seniors last year, just to kind of see a lot of guys step up has been fun to see,” Ellingson said.

For the rest of the tournament, Wolfe wants to see the team finish strong and keep winning games.

“We want to finish the season on a winning note, which means we would win our last game. It’s been a great season up to this point and we just want to keep trying to accomplish our goals every week,” Wolfe said.