Football: Tigers prepare for Mayo with scrimmage at Lakeville North

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The Farmington football team prepared for tomorrow night’s season opener at Rochester Mayo by taking on three teams in a scrimmage Saturday at Lakeville North.

The Tigers faced Lakeville North first, then took on North St. Paul before finishing with a matchup against Armstrong.

“I thought that we saw good improvement throughout the scrimmage and we had some pretty good execution both on offense and defense,” said Farmington head coach Mark Froehling, who returns nine starters from last year’s 1-8 team. “There were a few errors in technique and in assignments both on offense and defense. We just need to get that stuff cleared up. That’s why we’re practicing.”

The first scrimmage against a talented Lakeville North team brought some of those errors to light.

“They’re a good team with a lot of experienced players. Their defense brought a lot of edge blitzes that were difficult for us to pick up this early in the season,” Froehling said. “That will be some good film to look at and learn from.”

The Tigers saw more success in their scrimmage against North St. Paul. The offense put together a long touchdown drive and the defense played well, according to Froehling.

“We had a nice, long touchdown run and our run game overall was better during that scrimmage,” he said. “And except for one play, our defense was real tough.”

Among the defensive players Froehling mentioned for their solid play were returning linebackers Drew Hegseth and Ryan Schoening, defensive tackles Andy VanBlarcom and Bret Hoffman, and secondary players Blake Weinand, Andrew Peterson and Alex Chadwick.

Froehling also said he was pleased with the way quarterback Darren Beenken, receivers Nate Graham and Austin Bassett and running back Athen Ashton executed the offense. He noted that new offensive lineman Tom Sell, David Silber, Josh Boatwright and Ryan Gowan showed some promise, as well.

Correcting the mistakes made at Saturday’s scrimmage and making adjustments according to what the coaches see on their tape of Rochester Mayo from last season are on the to-do list for Froehling heading into tomorrow night’s road game in Rochester.

“I know they run more of a spread offense. We’re in the process of working up a scouting report,” he said. “We’ll work specifically on Mayo’s offensive and defensive schemes this week and we’ll fix any of those things we saw on the film from our scrimmages. We’ll get those things understood by our players, then we should be ready to go.”

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