In Linn’s first football homecoming game last Friday against Fayette, the Wildcats showed improvement in a 54-6 loss.

“We’ve seen slow improvements, but we have to keep going,” said Coach Steve Samson. “Every team is different, and we’ll see something new every week on offense and defense. We have to prepare the best we can and work through mistakes as we go along.”

One of the issues on Friday was execution. “We had a couple of bad snaps at the beginning of the game,” said Samson, noting the very first play could have been a touchdown. “If that pass is two feet toward Gus (Peters) a little bit where he doesn’t have to dive for it, it’s probably a touchdown. Gus is probably going to outrun everybody on the field. He made what I thought was a diving catch because he had both hands underneath the ball, but the referee called it incomplete.”

Two bad snaps followed, leading to a punt attempt. That snap went awry as well, forcing Craig Laughlin to attempt to run for the first down.

“We didn’t get the first down, so we gave them the ball on our side of the field,” said Samson.

That led to Fayette’s second touchdown. “We were in a hole pretty quick,” said Samson. “On our next possession, we fumbled the first snap, so we were behind, you know, three touchdowns right off the bat because we couldn’t, couldn’t get a snap. You think you’ve figured it out because you go all week in practice and don’t have any bad snaps, and all of a sudden, here you are in a game, and you get bad snaps. So we’ll keep working on that.”

Linn trailed 21-0 in the second when Peters took a pitch and outran everyone on the field for a 79-yard TD. He finished with 66 yards on five carries due to setbacks on the ground. Cameron Hoelscher ran the ball twice for 32 yards, and Laughlin had 20 yards on four runs.

Tyler Wagner (1-7, 22 yards) returned to his position at QB but shared time with Hunter Bish (2-6, 27 yards). “Tyler’s ankle is still bothering him, and he was taped a couple of times,” said Samson. “While he was being seen to, Hunter was in the game. They’ll both get to play. It’s always nice to have two quarterbacks ready to go, and that’s how we do it practice.”

Trevor Brandt caught one pass for five yards, and Hoelscher completed two for 27 yards.

Defensively, Jason Greer and Joe Brandt led with nine tackles each, followed by Wagner (8), T. Brandt (6), Devin Brandt (5), Laughlin, Peters, Connor Knoll, and Xavier Knoll (4 each), Jake Bish (3), Bobby Winkelman (2), and Jacob Weidler (1).

Fatima travels to Russellville for a 7 p.m. game on Friday.