Last year was a tough season for the Marquette club football team. They went 0-6, lost the Brew City Classic to rival Wisconsin-Milwaukee and had their coach walk out on them in the middle of the season. Sunday, things got off to a much more amiable start.

Marquette beat Ripon 18-8 in Mike "Red" Maloney's first full season as head coach of the team. He was pleased with the effort his club gave against Ripon at Valley Fields.

"We did everything we wanted to do," Maloney said. "We grinded the ball. We had a touchdown through the air and two on the ground. It was a good effort."

Maloney was the first to admit last season took its toll on the team. But he also saw positives come from their abysmal 2004 season.

"We started playing better and started to build something here," he said. "We overhauled the defense and it is paying off this year."

Maloney said the face of the team is the defense, although the defense does not seem to have a particular face. Maloney said they use every defensive scheme from the 5-2 to the 3-4. But he was quick to call them a "linebacker happy" bunch. One of those linebackers is Charlie Weber, a team captain and president of the football club.

"We didn't allow an offensive touchdown today," Weber said. He was also quick to point out that the team does not need to worry about when they will win again.

"It's out of our heads now," he said. "We got the first one and that's big."

Now the team is moving on to new goals. The main one is to take the Brew City Classic game on Oct. 15 at Valley Fields. With no actual playoff system, the game between Marquette and UWM has become the focal point of the season.

"We have lost the last two times we played," Weber said. "We really want that trophy back."

Milwaukee River Challenge goes swimmingly for crew team

Marquette club crew kicked its season off close to home Saturday at the Milwaukee River Challenge. The team manned six boats: Two men's fours, two men's eights, a women's four and a women's eight. The men's fours placed 12th and 16th while the men's eights placed ninth and 12th. The women's four placed ninth and the women's eight placed eighth.

Co-President of Marquette Crew Martha Agler was pleased with the results.

"We did really well," Agler said. "We were sort of undermanned and we were up against stiff competition."

Wisconsin and Team USA were two of the big names participating.

Andrew Metz, one of the rowers on the men's team, was also excited about the team's strong showing.

"We did well even though we were substantially underpowered," he said. "We should do even better at some of the larger tournaments this season."

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on September 20, 2005.