Highlight Zone Countdown: G-E-T Red Hawks

GALESVILLE, Wis. — “I guess the biggest difference from last year’s team and some of the previous teams we had before, we kind of always had a show dog.”

Erik Van Vleet was one of those show dogs G-E-T head coach Jon Steffenhagen spoke of as the running back was named the Coulee Conference Player of the Year in 2013.

“And this year we’ve got a lot of scruffy dogs and we’ve got to work hard at it.”

Steffenhagen is looking for replacements all across the board. The Red Hawks bring back just one starter on each side of the football this season.

And for some positions like running back, the 19th year head coach is fine if it takes a couple of players to make up for the loss.

One player who will be a part of the backfield in 2014 is senior Austin Dahl.

“We are all stepping up pretty good. I mean it’s tough coming under him (Van Vleet) but I think we’ve been pretty successful so far with what we’ve been doing.”

Junior quarterback Connor Kokott looks at the loss of a pivotal player as an opportunity for others to step up.

“We’re not going to have any real outstanding guys, it’s going to be a lot more even. Evenly played, evenly shown. We’re not going to have a really outstanding guy that a lot of defenses are going to want to key on.”