The Highland Huskies will hit the road tonight to kickoff the new high school football season with a trip to North Cedar. Highland finished last year strong, winning back-to-back games after an 0-6 start and snapping a 15-game losing streak going back to 2021.

The Huskies return their top two rushers in seniors Sage Hartley-Norman and Logan McFarland, who combined to run for almost 970 yards and six touchdowns last fall. Senior Ayden Havel was also a big-play threat when healthy, catching 18 passes for over 300 yards and four TDs.

On defense, McFarland is a star in the making, piling up team highs of 55-and-a-half total tackles, 11.5 tackles for loss and four sacks last season. Highland head coach Cory Quail tells KCII Sports that, in order for everyone to play well and more wins to be strung together, they need to go back to basics.

“For us, it’s all about blocking and tackling,” Quail says. “We break down the game into the most basic and most important parts of it, which comes down to those two things. We make sure that we’re focusing on the fundamentals, and we want to make sure that those fundamentals are safe and sound so that we have kids stick out throughout the entire year.”

The Huskies are going up against a North Cedar team that beat them each of the last two seasons, including a 38-6 victory last year. The Knights went just 3-6 in 2023 but still had their most wins in four years, with starting quarterback Teagan Weber back as a junior. Highland takes on North Cedar this evening with a 7 p.m. kickoff.