With a preseason goal of making the playoffs, Aaron Allspach and his Twin Cedars Sabers football team got off to a slow start. After having to scramble to find a non-district game due to a late-season scratch by a district team, the Sabers had to play a week zero game against Essex, which they dropped 40 – 14. Twin Cedars would also lose to rival Melcher-Dallas and Wayne to drop their first three contests of the season. The head coach for Twin Cedars tells KNIA/KRLS Sports that their slow start can be credited to having such a young team, and that some of their seniors had never even played football at a high school level before.
“I think it was a lack of experience, a lot of those kids hadn’t played,” Allspach said. “You know, we had some seniors that this was their first year out and they ended up being good football players for us throughout the season. To get that game experience, it was just new to them, so we just didn’t really have everything together right away, and it was just kind of a lack of preparation.”
Allspach also said that getting the game experience in for those seniors was a big key to their next six game, as they won five of their next six, including their regular season finale against Tri-County to get into the postseason. Twin Cedars loses six seniors off their 2012 roster at the end of the school year.