Douglas plays home opener against Elko Friday

The Douglas High School football team will enter tonight's home game against Elko with the same short list of objectives the Tigers had last week in their 15-0 win at Fallon.

Coach Mike Rippee said his players will need to limit the number of mental mistakes on offense, avoid giving up the big play on defense, and win the battle of special teams and kicking game.

In tonight's 7:30 p.m. contest, however, missing an assignment may be more crucial than it was against a Fallon team that has a new coach, new offense and sophomore quarterback.

Elko is coming off a decisive 41-21 victory over Reno last Friday. And the Indians are riding a wave of success that includes a Northern 4A championship in 1998 and runner-up finish in the zone playoffs last year.

"This offense offers a much tougher challenge," Rippee said of Elko. "They run the wing-T and they run it real well. We'll try to control things up front and play assignment. We want to be tough at the point of attack, but we have to be disciplined.

"They're a talented team, they have a lot of confidence and they've had a lot of success the last few years."

Defensively, the Tigers will try to build on an impressive outing that included holding Fallon to minus-2 yards of offense in the first half and allowing only four first downs in the entire game.

On offense, the Tigers piled up nearly 300 yards against Fallon, but it was hardly a consistent performance.

"The effort was great and we saw some good things," Rippee said. "There were just a lot of little errors offensively. We weren't happy with the third-down conversions and the mistakes in the red zone.

"Hopefully, we'll get the mistakes worked out. We can't make the same mistakes this week, or we'll be the ones without any points on the board."