The North Posey Vikings finally got to play another football team Friday night, but things didn’t seem to go that well, as the visiting North Knox Warriors scored three touchdowns in an eight-play sequence of the two teams’ scrimmage.

"We didn’t play very well at all," Coach Joe Gengelbach said. "I thought that we should have been much more focused than we were. We made a lot of mistakes, we acted like we were sort of awed by the situation and as many kids as we had returning, that sort of puzzles me a little bit."

Gengelbach thought that the team was going to have start over between now and the Vikings’ season opener at North Putnam Saturday.

There were some bright spots, as Frank Rynkiewich rushed for 52 yards, while Cory Little kicked a pair of field goals and Derek Trogden scored the Vikings’ only touchdown of the scrimmage.

Gengelbach did say that he saw a number of good things from his team.

"In any scrimmage, you’re going to look at a bunch of kids," the coach said. "We saw some real positive moments from several players."

But after Trogden took it in from a yard out during the Vikings’ first sequence of the 106-play scrimmage, it was all Warriors, as Nick Goodwin scored from 26 yards out, Derek Chambers hauled in a 20-yard scoring strike from Dylan Caballero and Ryan Bolenbaugh scored from 11 yards out, all in a span of eight plays.

Those plays came against the Vikings’ second unit, Gengelbach explained. Due to a lack of players on the Warriors, North Knox played its first team against North Posey’s back-ups, which led to the scoring.

"That’s not an excuse," the coach said. "I think the way they were talking, they didn’t have enough kids to really put a different group in there, so a lot of our young kids were playing against some of their older kids, which is all right. You’ve got to learn to play and you’ve got to learn to play hard all the time."

Gengelbach thought the team was going to play well and felt that the team had been more polished in practice and credited North Knox with a lot of that.

"They were very aggressive, they come off the ball, they made us have to work beyond what our second and third string players that we have to go against in practice. So our players have to learn to pick it up and step it up a little bit."

Gengelbach thought depth would be a big key for the Vikings, since 14 players are back from last year’s team. He still hopes that depth will be the key as the team focuses on getting back to playing each week.

He thinks the team will become more aggressive and will takes thing more seriously as the season progresses.

North Knox returns eight seniors from a defensive unit which had a plus-24 takeaway turnover ratio last season and Gengelbach thought his team played very well against that unit.

The Vikings had a balanced attack Friday night, with 209 yards in total offense, while limiting the Warriors to 53.

Colton Motz completed all three of his passing attempts for 67 yards, while Adam Ruddell was perfect on his attempts, completing two for 10 yards. Aaron Hensley hauled in two completions for 38 yards.

Defensively, Jacob Sapp had four solo tackles and Tyler Ricker had three, Anthony Webb was one of several Vikings with three. Trogden and Rynkiewich each had two solo tackles.

Gengelbach feels the Vikings will have one of the tougher stretches around in the Vikings’ first five games.

"North Putnam is 25-2 the last two years," he said. "We come back with Mount Vernon, who was Sectional champion, and then we play Gibson Southern and Southridge, who was a Semistate finalist and Heritage Hills, which was another Semistate finalist, so I think that competition is pretty strong."

Gengelbach is optimistic about the season, mainly because he feels that is the way to approach any campaign, but he also knows that the Vikings are going to have to do better than they did Friday night.