Howitt Sees Growth In Football Team; Leyton Next

The Kimball Longhorns football team hosts Leyton at 7 p.m. Friday in their home opener after losing their first game of the season Aug. 25 at Hyannis, 58-20.

Kimball and Leyton are both 0-1 going into the matchup. Leyton opened with a 58-18 non-conference loss to Hemingford.

Longhorns coach Darrell Howitt sees growth in his rebuilding football program.

"We are definitely a different team than a year ago," he told the Observer. "I kind of knew that Hyannis was physical pretty solid football team. Every year, they are physical and that is something that we are increasing just in that game. We increased our physicality, and I think we learned that we can do this.

"So there is a lot of positive. The story of turnovers: We actually won the turnover battle, but we didn't capitalize on it. When Hyannis got it, they capitalized on it. If you take away some of those scenarios, that game becomes very close."

Game stats were not immediately available.

"We executed things that we wouldn't even have dreamed of executing at the end of the year last year," Howitt said. "I watched several of those freshmen and sophomores kind of come into manhood throughout the night. It was kind of cool to watch. I was really proud of them. Just watching them go out there, yeah, they hit, but I can hit too.

"Lots of good things, I am very hopeful that, especially with as young a team as we are, we will see a big jump from week one to week two. That is kind of over the years when I see the learning curve."

"We were in the position to do things well we just shot ourselves in the foot with some penalties and then ball security. That is what I have been preaching to the kids ever since Friday night. Last year was the horror story of ball security. This year, we haven't started real well, but our mentality is different. I think we can fix it this year."