Courtesy Photo Posen’s Cole Krajniak chases down a Hale player during last year’s rainy road loss. The Vikings hope for revenge on Friday when they play in Hale on Friday to open the season.

POSEN — The Posen football team may be young, but if the words of their longtime head coach prove to be true, they just might be ready.

“We are really excited,” 12th-year head coach Greg Pietsch said. “We have been working hard. We are relatively young, but the group that we have coming back is pretty experienced. We took our lumps last year, but I feel like that has motivated us and we are ready to roll.”

First up for the Vikings is a road trip to Hale on Friday, for a North Star League Little Dipper contest. The two teams met in week eight last year, and Posen led that contest 22-0 in the first half, only to see the Eagles storm back for a 32-28 victory on a last-second touchdown pass.

“You learn from plays like that, it motivates you,” Pietsch said. “It was a tough game with them last year and it was part of the process, part of the learning experience for our kids. Losing motivates you and we are going to try to give it a go at them again.”

The Vikings have plenty of motivation this fall. They went 1-8 last year, but five of those losses came by 10 or fewer points. A few plays go their way and a totally different narrative might have been written about that team.

“I never felt like the morale of our team ever took a hit,” Pietsch said. “We knew we were extremely young last year, you could almost call us a JV team playing varsity. We challenged our kids in the off-season and they have really accepted those challenges. Going 1-8, it motivated us as a team. A lot of those games were within 10 points or we had leads at halftime that we just didn’t hold on to. We are going to do everything we can to fix that this year.”

The Vikings have 17 players this season; 12 of which are coming back from last year’s team. Seniors Josh Gardner, Cole Krajniak, Lucas Mercier and Trenton McCormick all return as do juniors Jack Romel, Ethan Romel, Logan Timm, Grayson Hincka, Connor Paul and sophomores Eli Chojnacki, John Ennest and Tristin Hepburn.

New to the team are sophomore Owen Commerford and freshmen Colton Paull, Lloyd Page, Ben Styma and Blaine Rondeau.

“Krajniak is a three year starter, jack of all trades. He will play wide receiver, quarterback, defensive end, safety for us and is a returning captain,” Pietsch said. “We are looking for big things from him on both sides of the ball. Athletically he is one of the best in the area. Ethan Romel is another returning running back, we are looking for big things from him. Jack Romel is back as our quarterback. Mercier has worked extremely hard on his game too as a tackle, tight end and linebacker. We have a lot of kids that I think are going to be balanced on offense and going to get after you on defense. They are an exciting group to coach.”

The Vikings’ schedule also consists of, in order, Hillman, Rogers City, Charlton Heston Academy, Mio, Onekama, a proposed contest against Rock Mid-Pen in week seven, and Atlanta and Au Gres in weeks eight and nine.

“We are trying to just push ourselves every week to improve and try to bring the team together and see what we can do with our season,” Pietsch said. “I’m excited to coach this group, and we will sit down and discuss some goals, but I have high expectations for this group. We have a lot of good kids that come from really good backgrounds who are hard working blue collar-type kids that give it their all and I just love coaching them.”