Winhawk Football Runway
(KWMN)- The high school football season continues on this Friday night for area teams as both the Winona Senior High Winhawks and the Rushford-Peterson Trojans will have their week three matchups.
Winona
The Winona Winhawks fell in their week two matchup to Wisconsin side, Mondovi, last Friday night, 38-22. They started themselves in a hole, falling to 14-0 in the blink of an eye after the first throw from Senior QB Deion Prolo was intercepted.
Winona was still able to make a game out of this one for the first three quarters. Tying it up at 22 a piece with 12 minutes to play. In the 4th, however, Mondovi front five was too much to handle for Winona–on both sides of the ball–as they couldn’t answer the two fourth quarter scores form Mondovi, and Mondovi solidified the win.
The offense didn’t look as efficient as it did in the first game of the season. Some errors up front, and mental errors leading to flags often plagued the Winhawk charge.
“They’re good up front. I think that caused us issues, we were able to shore it up at times, when we were able to, we made good plays. It was that [and] bad snaps, putting ourselves in holes. So that’s kind of it offensively, self-inflicted…It’s all stuff we can clean up,” head coach of Winona, John Cassellius said after the game.
Deion Prolo had an off night through the air, throwing 10 of his 17 passes for completions and 116 yards with an interception. Prolo ran his way to 58 yards on the ground and a score, while Jaden Blanck was a bright spot. Eclipsing 160 yards on just 11 attempts with two touchdowns.
Defensively the Winhawks struggled to stop the uber-rushing attack from Mondovi. Allowing 286 yards on the ground, they gave up 38 points as well as lost the time of possession. Cassellius said, “I think a part of it, is we need to be able to rest our guys…We just need to continue to work on it. There are times we got them in passing downs, and then we gave up contain…I think they saw they can make some stops, but now we got to make sure they get rest to do it.”
Winona will look to bounce back later tonight as they open Skyway Conference play vs. Byron from Paul Giel Field. Byron beat Winona twice last season, including in the section semifinals.
Our coverage begins at 6:30, kickoff slated for 7:00 p.m. on the Winona Sports Network, FM 99.3, streaming live online right here at winonaradio.com and on the Winona Radio App.
Rushford-Peterson
The Trojans answered their week one loss to Blooming Prairie in prolific fashion, smashing Bethlehem Academy 47-6.
It was the Trojans first win over BA since 2021. They saw a lot of success against Blooming Prairie in week one but fell short at the end of the game. This time around, they were sure to improve.
“Sometimes it’s tough to be able to do things like that, but this whole week was about us…There’s still things that we can continue to clean up, little things, but overall, super proud of our guys today,” first year head coach, Joel Hinke, said after the game.
Senior QB Caden Johnson had three total touchdowns on the day, while Junior Jonah Bunke had two of his own, catching one and running one in himself.
The Trojans will be tested with a tougher side in Goodhue later tonight at 7:00 p.m. Goodhue dominated RP last season 33-6, but Hinke says that the opponent is the least of the team’s concern,
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