After a long off season with many hours in the weight room, testing skills at passing leagues and inter-squad scrimmages, and a very productive camp the Sky View Bobcat football team is set to take the field tonight in their season opener against the Knights of Northridge High School.

A Sky View team that is coming off of a 6-5 season (3-2 in Region Play) will return 35 seniors this year in what it expects to be a very good season.

At the helm in his first start at quarter back will be senior Gabe Anderson who looks to fill the rather large shoes of departing senior Kyler Carlsen. Carlsen will be looking to take his football career to the next level as he heads to Idaho State this fall.

When asked about the game tonight Gabe said, “Our preseason has gone really well, I wouldn’t say I’m nervous, I’m just eager and excited to go out and play and see what we can do. I think we are strong in all of our positions and I think we are going to have a really strong team, we should do really well. Kyler helped me out a lot back when he played here, and I have really great coaches in Perry Christensen and Coach Anhder has helped out a lot. I trust them that they have me ready for the game so I think I’m ready to go.”

After leading the Bobacts to their sixth straight playoff appearance in six years as head coach Craig Anhder, and his coaching staff have high hopes and praise for what he characterized as one of the strongest teams he has coached thus far. "We’ve worked extremely hard, we’ve got a crew of kids who are stronger than we’ve ever had. We’ve got kids squatting 350, 400, one kid’s squatting 500 pounds, and so our off season has been very strong as far as the weight room is concerned. We’ve had a lot of success in passing leagues, we’ve played some tough teams and we’ve competed with them. We went to camp at Snow College and we were playing with some of the better teams in the state with Alta and Springville, and that’s not to say we were beating those guys but we were playing with them and competing at a high level. " Anhder continued, " We put in a new defense this year and we have a new quarterback and we needed to get out and compete, and that is one of the characteristics of this group is they are great competitors." Anhder feels that this year’s team is very robust with great numbers and a lot of depth.

The Bobcats are dealing with a few injuries, starting D-End Garyn Bennett will be sidelined for a couple of weeks having suffered a dislocated elbow in last week’s Blue and White scrimmage. Also missing will be starting tight end Don Corbell.

Catering the program to the personnel that they have Anhder says of this year’s offense, “We’ve got a really strong receiving core, we’ve got a good quarter back, but we’ve also got a really strong running game with a good offensive line with some good running backs and our quarter back is also a good running back. We’re going to seek out a lot of balance this year, controlling the ball. The way we run the ball is pretty exciting because we spread the ball all over the field.”

Anhder feels the Bobcats match up well with Northridge and anticipates a great battle tonight. He expects to see the team get out and play some good solid football and prepare for a good season.

Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight at the Sky View High School field.