Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

ADAMS – The Southland football team may be young, but it has been proven to be resilient.

A week after losing to Glenville-Emmons/Alden-Conger 50-0, the Rebels (2-1 overall) bounced back and beat Madelia 42-26 this past weekend.

It’s an impressive response for a team that has four two-way starters who are sophomores or younger and Southland head coach JJ Galle likes how far his team has come already.

“The learning curve is pretty steep, because we’re teaching them nonstop. We’re way ahead of where we thought we were going to be at the beginning of the season,” Galle said. “We had a great start against Houston, but part of that learning curve is knowing that just because you get a win, you still have to be working hard throughout the season. Against Alden, that was a little bit of our youth and inexperience going against a senior heavy team. We had to work to be better the next week and this last week was really fun.”

Due to an early injury to senior running back Austin Swenson and the transfer of senior running back Tyson Stevens to LeRoy-Ostrander over the summer, the Rebels have had to rely on a bevy of young players. Sophomore quarterback, Henry Wiste, and freshman running back Cael Smith have been playing in the backfield along with sophomore Beau Sathre, while sophomore Cameron Forthun has been playing on the offensive and defensive lines. All four of those players start on both sides of the ball.

Wiste has been thrown into the starting spot as a quarterback and he’s learned to shake off any mistakes that he’s made early on.

“It hurt to lose 50-0, but we learned we have to prepare better and I guess we bounced back pretty good. We’ve always had success at a younger age, but now everyone’s bigger. You just have to keep working and moving towards your goals,” Wiste said. “If you make a mistake, you keep playing. It’s not going to benefit you, if you keep your head down.”

Smith had two interceptions in Friday’s win over Madelia and he’s quickly finding his groove as a freshman starter.

“If you make a mistake, you just keep moving on,” Smith said. “We pick each other up and play as a team. We just want to keep building as a family every year.”

Forthun has plenty of size to match up with older players up front, but he’s had to learn to use leverage and a strong approach. He’s learned that he can’t physically dominate his opponents like he did at a younger age, but he is already learning new ways to succeed.

“We’ve always been bigger and we’ve still put the work in during the offseason,” Forthun said. “Now we’re trying to bring it to other people, even though varsity is a different level. It takes a lot of discipline and you have to play smart.”

Sathre ran for a career-best 150 yards against Madelia, but he’s not letting it get to his head. He knows that he has to stay up to date with the play book and learn to follow his blockers, instead of just trying to run through defenders.

“It’s definitely a different game and you’ve got to use your head a lot more, but you don’t feel nerves in the game,” Sathre said. “You just forget about it and play hard.”

The Rebel coaching staff has been looking at film every week and making adjustments with their younger players. Mostly they’ve had to break bad habits of young players, who had a lot of success at the junior high and JV levels.

“They’ve always had that drive to be better and they love to compete,” Galle said. “But when you’re good and talented early and the size is there, you get used to grabbing kids with your hands and bringing them down and you can’t do that at varsity. When you’re no longer the biggest bully on the block and these other guys are just as competitive, they have to go back to technique and fundamentals.”

The Rebels will play at Mabel-Canton at 7 p.m. Friday.