SPRING VALLEY — It may have rained for the entirety of the daytime hours Friday, but that was not going to stop rivals Spring Valley and Elmwood/Plum City from facing off for some muddy football. The Cardinal defense stood tall, improving to 4-1 on the season with a 21-0 win that sent the Wolves to 2-3 overall.

“It means everything to our family. We call each other family because that’s really all it is. It just means the world for us to win,” Spring Valley senior quarterback Mason Winger said.

The scoring opened halfway through the first quarter on third down and eight yards to go in the redzone. Senior Sam Schmitt did a great job of selling a play action fake, allowing senior quarterback Mason Winger to dish a short pass to senior Asher Turner, who scampered into the endzone.

After getting a defensive stop, Schmitt got his chance with the ball and took full advantage, taking a long run up the gut into the redzone again that was polished off with a quarterback sneak by Winger, 13-0 with 2:55 to play in the first half.

The damp duel may not have been the greatest example, but the Spring Valley offense has taken massive strides from where it was a year ago.

“Mason is definitely a lot more comfortable than last year. Taking that leadership role as a senior, and doing a pretty good job, making good decisions. Asher [Turner] just sort of picked up where he left off. I just feel like, as a whole, our offensive line is a year older, more mature and just a little more consistent,” Spring Valley Head Coach Ryan Kapping said.

Winger has been putting the work in to improve his own craft, and it has given the Cardinals a range of options. The big plays were not a massive part of the 2025 offense, but this year they seem to pick up a handful of massive plays every single game.

“Coach Hoolihan has been a big part of my development. I still make mistakes here and there, I’m not perfect, but definitely better than last year. I feel like I just need to keep working through the progressions every week,” Winger said.

EPC found some life in the fourth quarter, as a deep pass over the middle to the goal line by Winger was tipped by senior Brewer Link, a State high jump competitor in track and field, who used every inch of his vertical tacked on to every inch of his wingspan to make a deflection. Senior Teigen Bauer was there to collect the ball for an interception to start a Wolf drive at their own one yard-line. A couple of short gains later, quarterback Landen McDonough found Bauer over the middle, who got into a straight-line foot race that took EPC all the way down around the Spring Valley 20.

“He does a great job. He’s not a big fella, but he puts everything he has into it,” EPC Coach Mike Birtzer said. “In our other game this year against Colfax, he was really solid.”

Just as the Wolves were threatening to score, Spring Valley sophomore Landon Forster lurked over the middle and snuck in for an interception. The Cardinal run game wore EPC down on the game-sealing drive, capped by a 55-yard touchdown run from Turner.

“It was a little sloppy at first, and it’s really good to come out with the win. I think our defense really stepped up for the most part,” Turner said.

“It’s just effort. It’s all of us coming together as a family and giving all glory to God as a family. That’s really putting us together and made a beautiful team,” Turner said. “We need everyone giving 100% effort every single play. That’s what it’s going to take.”

The rain may have been a storyline from an outsider’s perspective, but if you ask coaches or players from either side of the rivalry, it was business as usual.

“I felt like the conditions were as good as they could be tonight based on how it was going today. Maybe it was more of a distraction during the day, kids thinking about what it might be like. I don’t feel like we necessarily executed great,” Kapping said.

Kapping said the penalties were his main issue with the team’s performance, something they will need to clean up in pursuit of a conference title.

“Business. We threw the ball, we pass, we run, it doesn’t matter, we do it all,” Turner said.

“I expected it would be the same as if it was a dry field. They were going to do their best to get Turner going, and they did, and it was going to be a physical, hard-hitting game, and it was,” Birtzer said. “They out-executed us.”

This game especially meant a lot to Spring Valley, because it was the first time taking the field after the school board officially named the field after Hall of Fame Coach Bob Thomas. Kapping did not play football for Thomas, but was coached by him in youth baseball, and had the opportunity to coach alongside him.

“He was just such an influential person in our community. When I first came back to Spring Valley as a coach, he was on the staff coaching again. I was able to learn from him for the first three years that I was back here. Just such an important mentor to me and so many people,” Kapping said. “Hard to totally put into words just how valuable and important he was and how much he did for this community. I think people don’t even realize sometimes if they weren’t around at that time just how much he did.”

On the field for Spring Valley, the defensive success stemmed from everyone stepping up and doing their jobs when they were called upon.

“We’re so young. We’re getting better every week,” Kapping said. “We’re playing a lot of kids, trying to rotate guys through, and I think that’s just going to continue to pay dividends moving forward.”

“It’s beautiful. I can’t like them enough, honestly,” Winger said.

For EPC, the team will need to remain solid every play to have success. When the Wolves were getting stops, they were setting the tone with their tackling.

“Our guys made tackles that were at the point of attack,” Birtzer said. “All their kids run very hard, and they run well. When we made our stops, it’s because we finished on tackles.

“We have to execute. I just talked to the kids. We can’t continue to lack the mental and execution part of the game. That’s what’s killing us, because we miss blocks and we miss assignments,” Birtzer said.