A fast Marshfield Tigers squad looks to end its playoff drought

By Paul Lecker

Sports Reporter

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 how they stack up against an opponent as they will take on Baraboo, Holmen, and host Black River Falls at a scrimmage before their season opener Aug. 19 at home against Wausau East.

Marshfield is coming off a 4-5 season, the 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 is 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 kept 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.”

Paul Lecker is publisher of MarshfieldAreaSports.com, a contributor to Hub City Times Sports. You can reach him by email at paul@marshfieldareasports.com.