John Raffel 

Sports Scene

Kurt Mabie, the Tri County High School principal, took over as the school’s football coach this season, and the Vikings struggled to a 0-9 record.

The previous head coach, Josh Gray, left to take  an assistant principal’s job at another school district.

Mabie, who was at Pewamo-Westphalia 18 years and is in his ninth year as Tri County’s principal, said that “[t]he AD and superintendent asked me to take over. I said I’d like to have someone else, because my job as building principal is a lot of work, especially where we’re at right now.”

But at the last minute, the job was still open and Mabie took it on an interim basis.

Becoming football coach the second week of the season, Mabie barely had time to prepare for the scrimmage.

We grow all the time,”  he said. “We’ve had a lot of mistakes and turnovers. But we have a real young team. It was lot of inexperience this year. It’s been a building aspect. We have a lot of great kids. We’ve been in the game but had mental mistakes.

We’re trying to get Tri County’s football program back to what it was in the 1970s and 1980s. We’ve brought some people on board [to the coaching staff].”

We have a young coaching staff here,” Mabie said, and he indicated that the plan right now is to try to find a new coach and to keep some stability on the staff. The school has had three head coaches the past three years.

 Tri County’s season ended with a 40-14 loss to Alma on October 21.