S-E’s Jordan Palmer hands the ball off to #7 Trenton Anderson during Thursday night’s 2026 season opener against Cooperstown. (Photo by Morgan Golliver)

SHERBURNE— It’s a new season for Sherburne-Earlville Timberwolves football as S-E returned to action Thursday night, hosting Cooperstown. S-E begins its new quest of being an eight-man football team after a loss in roster numbers and under new direction of head coach Ethan Johnson.

In their first game of the 2026 season, S-E fell 32-8 to a powerhouse team, who is used to this style of play. Coach Johnson said it was a real test for his team with not having any type of scrimmage to start the season like many other teams play in. However, Johnson’s team played two halves of football and looked a little bit sharper in the second half after some jitters being down 19-0.

“There’s a lot of things we need to work on, like not having a scrimmage,” he said. “I think that was kind of like our scrimmage of seeing what we could do with 14 kids out there. So, this was a good start for us to go back to the drawing board.”

S-E had the positivity late in the fourth quarter, where they had two good field possessions. One ended in a fumble but one ended in a scoring drive with five seconds left in regulation with Cooper Thorpe going up the middle for the score in a hurry up offense. Senior Quarterback Jordan Palmer ran the ball in for the conversion.

“The last drive, we told the kids that we’re just going to go to the basics and do it right and stick with it,” Johnson said. “It was good for the kids to see the basic stuff work. Even in our basic plays, we just weren’t blocking quite right and weren’t getting to where we were supposed to get. Just a lot of things that we’re going to have to go back, watch some film, shore up. It’s one game and we knew Cooperstown would be a good first game to kind of see where we’re at compared to the rest of the league and I think we’ll be in a good shape going forward.”

The team also saw some strong run game by sophomore Trenton Anderson, who looks to be Palmer’s go-to, along with Thorpe. Palmer also showed a strong pass game with a pass to Thorpe to set up the first and goal with seconds remaining. The senior also caught an interception on defense and had a good early pass to Jason Daring at the start of the game.

S-E (0-1) starts a three-game road trip with its first of three being at West Canada Valley Sept. 10 at 6 p.m.