The McCool Junction football team is playing every game like there’s no tomorrow. That’s because for them, there is no postseason at the end of the road, no matter how well the seventh-ranked Mustangs do.
After five seasons playing eight-man football in Class D1, the Mustangs opted back down to Class D6 to play six-man football this season. They’re ineligible for the postseason because of their enrollment number, however.
“Our approach when we go into a game is, treat it like a postseason game,” head coach Jarrod Weiss told NebPreps. “Treat it like it’s your championship game, because we get eight and that’s it.”
Weiss spoke with the team about their postseason ineligibility ahead of the season. He said he believes the players’ love of the game has kept them motivated.
“Having the ineligibility thing in the back of their mind, it might be there, but they don’t think about it very much simply because they love being together,” Weiss said. “They do a lot of things together off the football field and they hang around a lot. They come to practice with a great attitude every day and it really has been a blessing to coach this group of kids, that even though they understand that after eight games they’re done, it doesn’t seem to bother them.”
That may be in part due to their record. The Mustangs are 4-0, beating their opponents by 30-plus points per game. Weiss credits the team’s experience for helping them win.
“We just have a lot of individuals that played some quality minutes last year, and that has helped the transition to six-man, and just the competitiveness on a Friday night,” Weiss said. “They’re kind of use to that, so that’s been very beneficial for us.”
The Mustangs went 19-2 across their last two seasons in D6, winning a state title with an unbeaten season in 2020, before making the jump to eight-man in 2022. They went 0-8 in their first season in D1 and steadily improved from there, wining two games, then five, then seven with a second-round playoff appearance last season before returning to D6.
Weiss placed a lot of credit for the program’s recent success on its leadership group, which includes three juniors and one senior captain.
“They do a lot of the things that coaches just don’t have to worry about,” Weiss said. “They take care of how things go in practice, they take care of how things go in games, and they really are coaches on the field.”
One of those junior leaders is Colby Yates. Through four games he’s recorded 19 tackles (12 solo), two fumble recoveries and one interception at defensive back. On offense, the 5-foot-10 athlete has carried the ball 36 times for 723 yards and 15 touchdowns while completing 10 of his 17 passes for 281 yards and two more scores.
“Colby is a dynamic athlete,” Weiss said. “He’s got elite speed, he’s a physical kid for his size, he’s an intelligent young man, he’s a coach’s kid, he loves football and he does everything by the book.”
Yates and the Mustangs will look to carry that success forward as the season continues. McCool Junction welcomes Scribner-Snyder on Friday. The Trojans are 0-4 heading into the matchup, and the Mustangs are coming off of a 70-19 win at Nebraska Lutheran.
“My goal every game is to come out and play to the best of our abilities, and do the things that we’ve been taught to do and do them right,” Weiss said. “If we can do that, then success usually follows in some way, shape, or form.”
Kickoff between McCool Junction and Scribner-Snyder is set for 2 p.m. CT. The Mustangs will close out the season against Mead, at Dorchester and against Parkview Christian.
