Tigers football season begins Friday

The Mountain Home Tigers will kick off their 2009 football season at Jerome Friday night.

The Tigers of Mountain Home are coming off a 9-2 season that saw them come up short against the Hillcrest Knights in the 4A state football playoff semi-finals last year. Hillcrest went on to beat Jerome for the state title the following week.

Mountain Home Tiger head football coach Brian Floyd was pleased with this year's turnout for football.

"Yeah, we have 33 on varsity right now, the JV's around 30, and the freshmen just got started last Friday, so haven't got their numbers yet, but I think we're around 110, total."

Coach Floyd lost a number of quality seniors to graduation, but has a good nucleus to build around, which includes three all-state players.

"We return three first team all-state players -- Tom Hennessey, Jake Lewis and Ethan Standlee -- two on defense and one on offense. They're kind of our nucleus, and when you bring back three first team all-staters, we should be pretty good.

"We have a lot of juniors coming in that are going to be really great athletes, and we've got to get them ready to go."

The Tigers open this Friday at Jerome then host Caldwell on Sept. 4 in their other non-conference game. They have a bye week before opening their SIC 4A conference schedule Sept. 18 at Kuna.

Floyd sees the conference race up for grabs.

"It's pretty wide open. I think we have a very good chance to win the league. I also think the Nampa schools do as well. BK's got a new coach. Middleton's getting better every year -- Bill Brock's a really good coach, so they're stepping up and starting to play. They made the playoffs last year, so obviously they're doing a heck of a job over there. It's going to be week by week."

The Tigers had a Jamboree at Minico last Friday, playing two quarters against Minico and Pocatello.

Mountain Home travels to Jerome Friday night to open their season against Jerome, which finished second to Hillcrest in the 4A state playoffs. Mountain Home won a barn-burner from Jerome 44-43, at Mountain Home last year in their season opener. Coach Floyd hopes for a different type of game this year.

"That was a very good game, but hopefully it's not like that (high-scoring) this time around and we do a better job of keeping them under control.

"They do return their quarterback, and he was the running back when we faced them, but Lammers got hurt in the second quarter of their playoff game against Nampa, and this kid (Stauffer) came in during the second quarter against Nampa and he took them to victory against them, and then they beat Minico, and then they gave Hillcrest a good three quarters of work, so having him back is a lot different because he's a runner as well, as he was a running back. Now he's a dual threat.

"Lammers wasn't a dual threat. He was just going to throw the ball and try to stay upright as long as possible so his guys could get open. This guy's more of a mover and shaker kind, so it'll be hard to quarantine him, but I think we've got a decent game plan for that.

"They know that Jerome wants to beat them bad. We were the only blemish on Jerome's record besides Hillcrest, because they avenged their Minico loss and they surely wanted to see us instead of Hillcrest in the state finals last year, but it didn't work out that way -- I wish it kind of would have."

Kickoff is at 7 p.m. Friday night at Jerome.