ELLSWORTH — The Ellsworth Panthers struggled in the home field season opener, losing 35-0 to La Crosse Logan on Friday. The Panthers have not avoided difficult non-conference schedules, playing both Logan and La Crosse Central now for a third consecutive season.

While Ellsworth has a 2-0 record against Central, they have not had the same luck against Logan, losing a third straight matchup.

“It was a lot of week one stuff. We’ve got a lot of young guys playing for the first time on Fridays against a really good team that’s well-coached, big school,” Head Coach Rob Heller said. “We’ve just got to play better. We’ve got to eliminate some mistakes. We weren’t really assignment strong. Just got to watch the tape and get better, that’s all there is to it.”

Ellsworth was relatively clean on the penalty sheets, picking up just two. The team also only turned the ball over once. The primary issue was moving the ball against the Logan defense, picking up just over 100 total yards as a team.

The ball did not make it to the Logan side of the field, even after punts, until the second quarter. The early struggles had Logan up 14-0 after a quarter of play, and they would not turn back.

Ellsworth did begin to move the ball a bit in the second half, coming up short of a touchdown after some promising drives led by new starting quarterback Cooper Olson.

“It’s going to be tough to pull any confidence out of this game because Logan is so good. They’re big and athletic, they’re physical. We did string a couple first downs together there, had a little bit of success, but with as much youth as we have, that was going to be a challenging week one game regardless,” Heller said.

Ellsworth will now hit the road Thursday for a test against La Crosse Central. It is the Panthers’ final non-conference game before jumping right into the conference schedule with a 2025 playoff rematch with Osceola and a rivalry game against Prescott the following week.

Heller said ahead of the season that this team is not afraid of doing the difficult things to improve. They are committed to the work to get back on track in week two.

“We’ve just got to do our job,” Heller said. “We’ve got a lot of young guys. The lights are bright for the first Friday playing against a good team. We’re looking to see some significant improvements next week.”