Tiger football to see increase in NEN players in 2019

Northeast Nodaway (Worth County) Football

By Jacki Wood

After winning the 8-man state championship in 2017 and finishing as runners-up in 2018, the Worth County Tigers will see a much younger and inexperienced team as they enter the 2019 season.

But head coach Chris Healy doesn’t want that to be a factor in what his team can accomplish. Instead, they will focus on improving every week and win as many games as possible.

“We don’t want to set a limit on this team,” Healy said, who is now in his seventh year as head coach and 14th with the team. He will be assisted by Jon Adwell, Josh Smith and Will Coleman.

“We graduated seven seniors off of last year’s state runner-up team. We’re a young and inexperienced team so we have to focus on improving every practice and every week.”

He said they improved throughout the season last year and had new guys step up into key roles which will need to happen again this year.

“We’re going to miss important leaders from last year in Colton Wilmes and Dakota Auffert,” he said. “We hope new guys are ready to fill the roles left by the seven seniors and build on the success we’ve had the last two seasons.”

In addition to Wilmes and Auffert, the Tigers also graduated Caleb Parman, Isaac Alarcon, Bryant McCord, Jacob New and Jeremy Wimer on the team which went 10-3 overall, 5-2 in the GRC, and were district champs.

The Worth County/Northeast Nodaway co-op enters its 10th year and will see an increase in the number of athletes from NEN.

“This year will probably be the highest number of Northeast Nodaway players we’ve had on the team since we started the successful co-op,” Healy said.

Returning starters include senior LB/TE Reed McIntyre who finished last year with 58 tackles and junior OL/DL Austin Welch who had 37 tackles, 3.5 sacks and blocked for an offense that averaged eight yards per carry and had an All-State running back.

“Reed and Austin are going to be two upperclassmen that have to take expanded roles on the football team on both sides of the ball,” Healy said.

The Tigers will focus on becoming more balanced with the run/pass on offense which will be vital as they head toward the end of the season, Healy said, when they face three very challenging teams in Pattonsburg, North Andrew and Stanberry.

The Tigers will face South Holt/Nodaway-Holt on August 30 at Oregon.