Lots of obstacles, but West Branch football team back in familiar territory: the playoffs

CEDAR RAPIDS — It was going to be a challenging season all along.

The West Branch football program lost its longtime leader in the spring when legendary head football coach Butch Pedersen succumbed to cancer. Dealing with that was going to be tough enough in so many ways.

Then there was the schedule these Bears had to play, especially in the beginning. Nothing like opening with Williamsburg and Dike-New Hartford back to back.

Throw, pun sort of intended there, in trying to determine a starting quarterback.

“Then recently we’ve had some injuries which have kind of hurt,” said Coach John Hierseman. “It’s kind of been a season of adversity. You hope the kids just keep bouncing back.”

They’ve done a heck of a job thus far. West Branch regrouped after consecutive season-opening losses, upset a top-five ranked Iowa City Regina team a couple of weeks ago and heads back to the state playoffs.

The ninth-ranked Bears host Pleasantville in a matchup of 5-3 teams Friday night in the first round.

“Going through it, we find more and more things all the time that Butch used to do that now we have to do,” Hierseman said. “There is a lot of holdover from what Butch did before, how the kids play and how hard they play. That kind of stuff.”

And a lot of holdover on the staff that took over for him. Hierseman was Pedersen’s offensive coordinator, Tyler Bailey its defensive coordinator, Kevin Braddock its special teams coordinator.

They’d been part of this program as coaches for years, before that as players. Continuity was never going to be an issue.

“It’s all the same staff we’ve had,” Hierseman said. “We’re all really close, and that’s what has made it possible doing this without having Butch. All of us getting along well, nobody has egos or anything about what somebody is doing or somebody is not doing. We pick up the slack wherever and whatever it is.”

As a team, Hierseman said stout defense has been a staple for these Bears. Offensively, things have been balanced: just about 1,000 yards passing and 1,200 yards rushing.

Interestingly the leading West Branch rusher has just 294 yards. There are two of them, actually, in Auron Marsh and Zach Capper.

Sophomore Brennen Dale took over the QB duties in Week 3 and has played well, completing 61 percent of his passes for 820 yards and seven touchdowns. He also has rushed for 235 yards and nine TDs.

“The leadership was always there. Coming here, moving here from North Liberty, he didn’t know the offense well, so that took a little bit of time,” Hierseman said. “The beginning of the year, he competed for that varsity spot and didn’t get it right away. He went down to fresh-soph and had a great attitude down there.

“The fresh-soph coaches were really impressed when he came down, and there was no pouting or anything. That showed a lot. He played really well down there and eventually got his chance with us, took it and ran with it.”

West Branch beat a good Waterloo Columbus club the third week (30-23), which got things untracked. The 21-17 win over Regina came Sept. 29, though WB lost the following week to Wilton.

The three teams ended up tying for the District 5 championship, with Regina getting the top seed playoff wise because of point differential, with West Branch second and Wilton third.

“I think it shows that we can play with anybody in 1A,” Hierseman said. “1A has a lot of really good teams this year, but there’s not, like, a Van Meter from last year that was way out far and above everybody else. So I think it’s kind of an open field this year.”

His boys have been hearing that repeatedly from the coaching staff.

“That’s been the message for the last several weeks,”Hierseman said. “Really from the Regina week on, that is the message that we’ve been driving home to them. Even losing that Wilton game, that’s a game that we feel we should have won.

“But there’s another really good team in there, too. On any given night, anybody can knock anybody else off in 1A.”

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