After a spectacular and thrilling year, the Cuba City varsity football season came to an end last Friday night.
The Cubans traveled to Necedah where both teams battled defensively in the 3-13 loss for the Cubans. "Necedah was big and strong and fast," head coach Guy Kopp said. "At this level of play-offs you can't make mistakes. If you do the other team at this level will capitalize on them and that is what happened to us."
Necedah scored on a big 64-yard run in the second quarter and the Cubans were in position to make the play but several missed tackles led to the Necedah score. "We can't miss tackles and win games in the play-offs," Kopp said. "We played the field game all night and Greg Ganter once again showed his great skills punting the ball and  pinning Necedah deep several times, but we never took advantage of that because their defense was tough for us to move the ball."
Kopp said they tried a fake punt early in the fourth quarter. "We saw how they defended the punt and the holes were there and I thought we could get a first down," Kopp said. "Good teams make plays and they did a fine job of stopping us. We had chances to score but came up short too many times."
The Cubans did score a field goal in the second quarter to trail by four at the half.
The Cubans had six first downs and rushed for 124 yards on 32 carries. Alex Murphy led the team with 65 yards on 16 carries while Kyle Frederick rushed seven times for 32 yards. Brandon Slaats had one interception for a 36-yard return. Murphy also caught one pass for 30 yards.
The Cubans fumbled the ball four times and had four penalties for 20 yards.
Kopp said the bottom line was his team had a great season with great leadership from seniors. "In the end you will only have seven teams that will leave the season with a positive feeling on how the season ended and no what if's," Kopp said. "I still want to say this team accomplished a lot. They really showed ownership to the program and great pride to the coaches. The hard work the team put in the off season hopefully will motivate the younger players  to work hard lift weights and improve on this season as the seniors did from last year."
The Cubans finish their season with an overall record of 9-2 and a SWAL record of 6-1.