After a great effort in the season-opener, Hillcrest High hadn’t done as well with the pigskin as the coach had hoped.

“We are in a rut,” second-year coach Robby Kaelin said. “We are a team that has a lot of desire to do well, but to be frank, the last three games, we’ve seen some execution and techniques, both offensively and defensively, decline. Our kids are putting forth effort. It’s just not aligning with the execution and technique.”

The first game against Logan High, the Huskies “had a chance to win, and then they (Logan) went down and scored with about 40 seconds left and ended up winning that game (30-27). But we had really great execution on both offense and defense,” he said.

Kaelin said there was an unintentional mental shift after the first game.

“We started changing the culture last year, and kids put forth effort. They were making the changes they needed to. Our first game seemed like everything was clicking, and then, subconsciously, we saw we’re going to be close in games so I feel we weren’t going as hard as they could have in practices. We didn’t focus on the little things — and I’m a big believer in the little things matter. One of our core values is discipline, but we’ve seen a decline in holding our players and ourselves as coaches accountable for those little things, so we weren’t up to where we needed to be in terms of focusing on the little things with technique and execution,” he said.

The Huskies lost three consecutive games to Payson, Hurricane and Park City high schools.

With suffering some injuries in the Sept. 6 game versus Park City, Hillcrest’s bye week came at the right time.

“Two of our four captains went down against Park City, along with three other starters,” he said. “This week will help with a lot of our injuries, and we’ll be revamping a lot of things with practice, refocusing and making those adjustments going forward.”

Younger players stepped up in the game, but Kaelin acknowledges the team already is young.

“We’ve got two offensive linemen who are seniors, and our running back’s a senior, and we have one rotating receiver who’s a senior. We have very little returning varsity experience so it’s a lot of growing pains while still trying to execute. We’re trying to figure out how we can get everybody on the same page,” he said.

Kaelin said last year’s 19 seniors who graduated (with three now playing post-high school ball), most played “significant” time on both sides of the ball.

“We have a lot of not only young players, but first-year players as well. I’ve got four offensive starters who never played football until this year. We’ve also been doing a lot of recruiting within our own walls of the school. Out of our 22 offensive and defensive starters, we’ve got five or six kids who didn’t play football last year, but are athletes from other programs,” he said. “I’m excited about the future of Hillcrest and about the last five games of this season.”

Kaelin also is enthused about the six elementary and middle school teams, about 75 kids, who are playing in the Husky feeder system.

“We’re going to be following through with our discipline, effort, team and honor, which are our team standards. Kids are going to want to play for Hillcrest. Within the next five years, we’re going to be competitive in our region. We’re going to be able to retain the kids we developed in our little league programs. We’ve got a group of players who want to be here and want to fight for Hillcrest,” he said.

Hillcrest returns to the field against a “solid” Tooele High, followed by a Murray team that is “doing really well.”  

“Both of those will be tough games, but ones we can be in if we play to our potential,” Kaelin said.

Stansbury, Cottonwood and Jordan also are on the Huskies’ schedule. λ