Sam Thiel/Winonan

With classes officially started and fall approaching, football season is right around the corner.

After going 10-2 last season, including a 41-21 victory over Lidenwood in the Mineral Water Bowl, the Winona State University football team looks to replicate its success.

Head coach Tom Sawyer said, “The biggest thing that we’re looking at right now from spring practice is consistency. This year we have a couple of new guys on the defensive side that are working into our schemes but offensively we are working on our consistency.”

The Warriors are returning 12 starters from 2012, including senior quarterback John Teigland.

“I’ve just worked on trying to be consistent,” Teigland said, who passed for 2,942 yards and 24 touchdowns last season.

“On offense you got to have 11 guys doing their job to have a successful play and making sure we’re consistent for four quarters.”

One player that won’t be on the field this year is all-time leading rusher Rayon Simmons Jr., who graduated last year.

This season three different players will fill the shoes of Simmons, including seniors Theo Burkett and Chichi Ojika, as well as junior Anthony Resnick.

“Well you don’t really replace him you just do it differently,” Sawyer added. “We’ll probably use three different backs in a game, they all have different skills. Now we’re going to fast and more wide open kind of guys versus a heavy hitter like Rayon was.”

The Warriors have been consistent over the years, going 7-4 the last three seasons (2009-11) before improving to 10-2 last season.

“The biggest thing is it’s always a goal to try and play a 12th game that’s what we talk about every year. “ Sawyer said.

“Right now, the biggest focus in on week 1. We’ve got a home game to start the season where we got a very good Bemidji State team coming in here, and then we head to St. Cloud in week two, so we need to worry about our start and not the finish.”

The football team returns to Verizon Wireless Stadium for the first game of the season at 6 p.m. on Sept. 5 against Bemidji State.

Contact Sam at [email protected]