For most teams, the second week of the football season means settling into a groove and ironing out the mistakes and jitters that came in the first game, but for the Redington Huskies it has more meaning.
The small-school Huskies will play their second varsity game in program history against medium-school Ketchikan on Saturday, and Redington coach Tony Brooke is still trying to get his squad up to speed with teams that have been playing football for years.
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"A lot of these guys really haven't had a ton of varsity high school football playing time," Brooke said. "We're still trying to put a system in and get guys going."
Redington — a second year school in Knik named after beloved dog musher Joe Redington — lost its varsity debut 59-6 last weekend against Monroe Catholic.
But Brooke said there were positives the Huskies took away from the loss, including scoring their first touchdown and playing in front of a home crowd of several hundred fans.
"To have kickoff and look at the stands — it was so nice to see it packed," he said. "It was a huge boost for those boys to have a full house.
"We had music going, just got a new sound system in, we had cheerleaders for the first time … It had an actual football feel to the game. It's the small little things like that that get the players (going)."
The last time Brooke coached a football team, he was attending college at Notre Dame in the 1990s and his players were little kids.
He made the jump to high school football last year when he kick-started the Knik program with fellow Redington teacher Larry Scott.
In 2015, Redington Junior/Senior High included students in grades 6 through 10 and the football team — which played a four-game JV schedule — had about 25 freshmen and sophomores. The Huskies were shut out in three of their four games.
This year, the school goes through 11th grade and 38 players — freshmen, sophomores and juniors — came out for football.
Brooke said enrollment at Redington is just over 500 for the entire school with about 150-175 in grades nine through 11. Next year there will be a senior class.
He said his players came from schools like Houston and Wasilla where they may not have considered playing football.
Now, they have the chance to start something new, and everyone is on the varsity team.
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"We have freshmen rockin' and rollin' that have picked up the system, sophomores last year that are playing," Brooke said. "Right now we don't have that senior class, so everybody gets a chance to go out and compete."
Brooke said one player the Huskies lean on is center-turned-running-back Kyler Rumfelt.
"Good things will happen once he fully understands the system," Brooke said. "He's a tough, hard-nosed runner whose feet never stop. He'd have five or six guys on him and just keeping moving."
Another running back, Brian Horne, scored Redington's touchdown in the season-opener on a 3-yard run in the first quarter.
"We run to try to set up the pass," Brooke said. "I don't want to say it's a basic offense, but it's one if it's executed properly, we get big plays.
"That's our big focus right now, making sure that execution happens."
Brooke said he's still working with some of the players on football basics, like the three-point stance and how to carry a football. Once things start clicking, he thinks the team will turn the corner.
"It's kind of nice trying to build this thing from the ground up," he said. "A lot of growing pains right now, but the future is really bright."