Photo Courtesy of Mid-Prairie Football Social Media

We are less than a month away from the return of Friday night lights in southeast Iowa and the Mid-Prairie Golden Hawks opened up their preparation for the 2021 season this week with their annual camp. The Golden Hawk football program has been meeting daily this week with the middle school level on the field from 5-6:20p.m. and the high school Hawks working from 6:30-8:30p.m. Wednesday night, Mid-Prairie head coach Pete Cavanagh talked about what he has seen from his team and what he hopes they take from the week. “We’re trying to get our base fundamentals in and see what we have. For the coaching staff it’s a huge evaluation tool. We also begin the process of getting the guys in football shape. For us it’s fundamental work, breakdown in individual groups, and learning the basics. A lot of it this year, the young guys are learning. A lot of ‘sit and get and learn it’. The older guys have been here, been through the summer workouts and understand what we are trying to do. Part of what we are trying to build is the relationship between the upper and underclassmen. We want to build that foundation now in the summer. This time of year, even as coaches you always get those nerves and excitement. Like what do we have this year? What are we going to teach? How are we going to get it done? It’s fun. For this year, we graduated a lot of kids from a season ago that played key positions so we have a lot of new starters. To me that’s always fun. It’s challenging, but also exciting.”

Camp wraps up Thursday night. Cavanagh is entering his 19th season as Mid-Prairie head coach and has a 111-69 record in his time with the program. The Golden Hawks were 4-4 a season ago with a playoff win against Central Lee before wrapping up the season in the second round with an 18-15 loss to Tipton. Mid-Prairie has their first live action in a Gatorade scrimmage Friday, August 20th against West Liberty in Wellman. The Golden Hawks officially open the season Friday, August 27th hosting West Burlington, Notre Dame at Dwight G. Sattler Field. You can hear all of the Mid-Prairie football action live this season on AM 1380, FM 102.5 and KCIIradio.com.