The Bombers’ season sadly ended to the Randolph Rockets at John Burch Park with a final score of 28-20. The Bombers, who have made the section championship nine years in a row, lost in the first round of the playoffs for the first time in over a decade.
Ironically, the Bombers opened their season with a win against the Rockets in Randolph with a score of 20-14, but would lose their following two games against Rochester Lourdes and Chatfield. Many people were considering the powerhouse team to have fallen off from the previous years due to losing a good senior class, and they were projected to go 4-4 through the regular season. The Bombers closed out the regular season against Triton with a loss to make that prediction true.
Head Coach Dan Meyers said that the team did a great job running their “bread and butter plays” of trap and counter runs, which shines through with the team averaging 6.18 yards per carry. T.J. Kyyra led the team in total yards, touchdowns, and carries, with 90 carries for 677 yards and 7 touchdowns through 8 games.
Although they didn’t quite look like previous years teams, Cannon Falls still put up 24 touchdowns and 2,534 rushing yards on the season. They had a third down conversion rate of 45.24% compared to a combined opponents rate of 19.4%, while on fourth down they had a 44.44% rate compared to an opponents conversion rate of 33.33%.
Cannon Falls is already looking forward to next season with the team returning most of their starting players. Coach Meyers stated that, “we have a very good core of juniors and sophomores that got a lot of experience this season, I’m looking forward to getting those guys in the weight room and back on the field.” Coach Meyers expressed that the team needed to be more physical and tackle better at mid-season and expressed the same thing when asked at the end of the season. The Bombers are doing a new lifting program this year designed to rid of this lack of physicality and better the team. The coaches are also requiring players to attend 75% of before or after school lifting this winter in order to become eligible to be a captain.
Although the Bombers went 4-4 this season, they went against teams that were very talented and also graduated many players. Next season, the Bombers will retain their same schedule as this year, except the home and away games will be switched. With that, the Bombers will open the 2026-2027 football season at home against the Randolph Rockets.
