Homegrown Cobber Gear Up For Football Season

Concordia Football Return September, 2nd

MOORHEAD, MN. — Concordia Football is well into fall camp as they prepare to kickoff their season September 2nd against Wisconsin, Eau Clair. The Cobbers hosted media day this morning with week one just under three weeks away.  The Cobbers feature a ton of local talent with 71 members coming from Minnesota or North Dakota when combining the roster and coaching staff on last year’s roster and plenty coming back. Former Shanley Deacon, Cooper Mattern heads into his second season as starting quarterback with the team and now is teammates with many former high school rivals. Head Coach Terry Horan is in his 22nd year as head coach of the Cobbers and says that the programs local roots have been a crucial part of the teams identity since long before he was at the helm.

“Get the local guys and and you get the local flavor, you get a lot of people who want to come out and continue to watch them play so that is important to us. When I was recruiting coordinator here for Coach Christofferson he always said your 100 to 200 mile radius guys, they’re the most important piece to your puzzle of your program and we always have about 25 – 30 kids from our local backyard schools which is great. We have 136 kids in our program so having a little bit of a local flavor it good,” said Horan.

“Definitely really cool. You know I guess in high school you don’t really like these guys and then you end up playing with them and it’s definitely a different taste. It’s always cool to be able to play with these guys and get to know them especially when you played against them
in high school,” said Mattern.

The Cobbers are coming off a 5-5 2022 season in which were 3-1 at home. Concordia’s season was highlighted by a 59-0 homecoming win over Hamline. The 2023 Cobbers bring back plenty of experience and key players as the look to climb back above .500.

“We want to continue to improve right. Our expectations are always high here and we want to be better than we were a year ago. And we’re not a .500 program. We’re not a .500 coaching staff. No, our players are too competitive for that. But it’s game in and game out we got to be ready to play. We got to stay healthy. We got to build that depth but I’m excited to be on day six and camp is going well,” said Horan.