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Prep Confidential

Jackson's 5 XX

Posted by: Marcus Jackson

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 11:34 AM

Each week staff writer Marcus Jackson will pose five questions to an area prep athlete. This week it’s Arthur-Lovington lineman Dan Bolsen.

MJ: Do you have much interaction with Amish folks growing up near Arthur?
DB: I actually live on a farm and we have horses and stuff so we deal with Amish horseshoers and stuff like that. It’s cool. I kind of wish the Amish could play football, there are some crazy-fast Amish kids. They’re strong and they’re farm boys so they know how to work and they have good work ethic. They’d probably make our baseball team win state every year, too.

MJ: What do you think the biggest misconception is about Amish people?
DB: People don’t give the quote, unquote Dutch much credit. We go into places sometimes and people are like, “Oh the Dutchmen are here.’ Well you know the Dutchmen can run and our team is fast, people don’t think we are and we’re strong.

MJ: How tough was it for you guys missing the playoffs last year after making it five straight years?
DB: Coming off my sophomore year, being a starter both ways on the Elite Eight team, I really wanted to have success. Cory Dowd and those guys were good and it almost felt like a letdown for them and the tradition of being in the playoffs every year. We were the team that, I don’t want to say blew it, but we had some losses we really shouldn’t have had so we had to bounce back this year and that was our goal when last season ended.

MJ: How cool has it been for you and your teammates to bounce back this year?
DB: It’s been awesome. I feel we’re more of a team than we were last year and we’re a lot closer. The juniors and seniors in this group, we do a lot of stuff together, a lot of team activities and the better team bonding you have the more you’ll win.

MJ: Villa Grove’s coming to your place 9-0, how sweet would it be to ruin that?
DB: It would be awesome. Words can’t express how great that would be. It’s senior night and we’re going to have an amazing crowd there and Villa Grove’s kind of a rivalry and they’re a phenomenal team so if we can go knock off a ranked team in the state, that would be awesome.

MJ: You’re from Lovington and you and the Arthur guys get after it pretty good on the basketball court. Is it weird teaming with them for football?
DB: We joke a lot about it. Those guys give me a hard time because we only have two guys from Lovington on our team. They give me a lot of crap because I played against them in basketball. We’re tight friends in the fall and in the spring for baseball. But in the winter it’s like a bloodbath out there. We try to kill each other, it’s crazy. We met three times last year so the rivalry got hot.