Last year is in the past, but the Northern State football team plans to use lessons learned to help ensure success on the gridiron this fall.
The Wolves lost four straight games last fall before turning their season around and finishing with a flurry.
“I hope we never forget going forward. I hope our players never forget going through that,” said Northern coach Mike Schmidt. “As humiliating as those moments can be, you find out a lot about yourself and your program. You find out a lot about your friends and your teammates when you’re lying flat on your back and how everybody responds.”
Schmidt said the challenging part is educating the new players on the squad this season who never went through that stretch, and helping them realize the significance of coming out stronger because of it.
“I hope we never forget about 0-4. We talk about it a lot here. It’s tricky because there’s a lot of new players that have come in that don’t know that, and at the same time, they need to understand it,” Schmidt said. “They need to understand the scars that we have from 0-4 that brought us to the winning streak and six of our last seven and playing really good football.”
The Wolves have key playmakers back on both sides of the ball. The offense will be led by returning starting quarterback Daniel Britt.
“A good place to start is just to have a returning quarterback,” Schmidt said. “It’s the first time that I’ve had that.”
Other key members returning on offense include the likes of backs Wyatt Block and Hank Kraft.
The defense is loaded led by All-American linebacker Jake Adams, who is closing in on the school’s all-time career tackle record after just two seasons. He will be joined by Max Van Landingham on the line and Kegan Mountain in the secondary.
“We have three returning all-conference guys on defense at all three levels. Max Van Landingham’s back. He’s been here forever. Jake’s back, he’s been a two-year starter already. Kegan’s back in his second year starting,” Schmidt said. “We kind of have a lot of pieces that are back and you feel that at camp, you feel that in game prep now this week. We’re just veteran.”
There are plenty of familiar names up and down the NSU roster, despite the team having less than a dozen seniors this season.
“We have really good starting spots right now. I think that speaks to the depth, I think it speaks to the program, I think it speaks to the recruiting that we’ve done these last few years,” Schmidt said. “We’ve put together some really good classes. We’re still really young. I think we only have 11 seniors this year.”
During the current culture of the portal where numerous athletes transfer each season, Schmidt noted it’s special for the Wolves to retain so many players.
“It’s kind of cool,” Schmidt said, “because it’s such a lost thing right now in college athletics, that you have this roster carry over.”
Schmidt said the bar is once again set high for the Wolves this season. In short, that means one thing: qualifying for the playoffs.
“The goal and the bar is to be in the playoffs. That’s just our expectation of where we have to get this thing to,” Schmidt said. “Anything less than that is just not good enough. That’s just the way it is.”
The Wolves, who kick off their season on the road Saturday evening against the University of Sioux Falls, naturally want to get off to a much better start then they did last year.
Schmidt believes that a key to the upcoming season will be the team’s offensive output.
“We’ve got to be more explosive. We weren’t explosive, we didn’t finish drives last year,” Schmidt said. “We’ve got to find a way to get that offense that we all saw here in 2021, that’s got to match up with where our defense is at right now as well.”
While the season is a marathon, Schmidt said the team needs to play with a sense of urgency on each snap.
“We don’t live and die in one week. You just can’t,” Schmidt said. “Now, I think you have to try and live and die on every play, but we don’t live and die by every week.”
Schmidt likes his team and the direction it is headed. He would like to see a continuation of last season, when everyone involved in the program wanted to play one more game at the end of the year.
“That’s the goal,” Schmidt said. “I think every year your goal as a coach is you want your team to say I wish we had one more game.”
Schmidt said the team has a common belief this season and it all started by the way the Wolves handled extreme adversity last fall.
“I’m especially grateful that they rallied behind me and what I want to do here, what I think is the way to win at Northern,” Schmidt said. “I thought that was the biggest part of last season, was that those guys bought into our way of doing things and my belief on how we are going to win games at Northern. When you have so much faith in it, you just can’t wait to play that next week.”
