This story is sponsored by Forward Financial Bank
By Paul Lecker
MarshfieldAreaSports.com
MARSHFIELD – For the past two weeks the Marshfield High School football team has been putting in work to prepare for the 2016 season.
On Saturday, the Tigers will finally get to see what they have against an opponent as they will take on Baraboo, Holmen and host Black River Falls at a scrimmage in preparation for its season-opener Aug. 19 at home against Wausau East.
Marshfield is coming off a 4-5 season and a second-straight campaign in which it failed to reach the WIAA playoffs.
Head coach Denny Goettl said the team is taking its practice time seriously and he’s ready to see what the Tigers have.
“The kids that are here are really bought in, they’re really working their butts off, and it’s ‘win or else’ for them,” Goettl said. “They want to do well. I can really see the effort. There’s the cliché of ‘We had a good summer’ from coaches, but the kids have put in a lot of time.”
Goettl said he is happy with how practices have proceeded thus far as the coaching staff has tried to keep the players busy.
“We’ve done a lot of new special teams work and have a lot of kids doing a lot of different special teams, which I love,” Goettl said. “We don’t have a lot of time standing around. If guys aren’t involved, they are going over to the gun and catching passes…always keeping busy.”
One thing that has Goettl excited about this year’s team compared to last year’s is its speed.
“We have 17 guys that ran under 4.8 (seconds) on the roster after testing,” Goettl said. “We’ve got a little bit more team speed than we’ve had.”