Friday is an important night for the St. Edmond football team.

The Gaels not only make their Dodger Stadium debut, but they do so against district foe Collins-Maxwell.

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.

After dropping the season opener to defending eight-player state champion Bishop Garrigan in Algona last week, the focus for Matt Dillon and St. Edmond (0-1 overall, 0-0 in district) has been on the Spartans (1-0, 0-0).

“We need to come out and try to control the game early,” Dillon said. “The kids are excited to be at home and competing inside Dodger Stadium.”

Making his first start at quarterback, Ethan Swisher completed five passes for 137 yards in the opener, including a 70-yard scoring strike to Grant Galles. Galles had two catches for 99 yards, and the junior also returned the opening kickoff back for a score.

Klay Baker ran for 60 yards, while Sam Myer added a rushing TD vs. the Golden Bears.

On defense, returning all-stater Adam Walker had 7.5 tackles, including seven solo stops and a sack. Koleman Hanson also had a sack with a fumble recovery, and Myer recorded a team-high 11 tackles.

Junior Kinnick Henning was injured early in the game vs. Garrigan and will be sidelined for the foreseeable future. Sophomore Aaron Hindt is expected to make his season debut after missing last week.

“We won’t know about Kinnick for a while because he can’t put any weight on it for the next several weeks,” Dillon said. “But we’ll have Aaron back and we’ll use him a lot on both sides of the ball.”

Collins-Maxwell did all its damage on the ground in a 64-0 win over GMG, rushing 28 times for 382 yards with eight touchdowns. Josef Dvorak, a returning starter, had 146 yards and three scores while Cooper Wierson added 88 and two.

Caleb Coffelt, Noah Andersen and Reed Oswalt each ran in a touchdown.

The Spartan defense recorded 22 tackles for loss and recovered three fumbles.

“Honestly, we don’t know much about them,” Dillon said. “They didn’t attempt a pass vs. GMG and ran the ball extremely well. We know what we know from last season and that is they have some really good players.

“We’ll need to be aggressive and get after it.”

This is the second meeting all-time betwen the two, as St. Edmond won last season, 61-14.