Although Oskaloosa is coming off a loss in its season opener, the Indians will have no trouble getting ready of Friday’s opponent — a little bruhaha with Pella.

Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. following the freshman game at Pella High School.

The Little Dutch, fresh off a 21-18 triumph of Washington last week, have won 18 of the 30 meetings with the Indians, including last year’s 27-20 overtime thriller at Pella.

Oskaloosa coach Darrell Schumacher, who has a 3-3 record against the Little Dutch, said it won’t be hard for the Indians to be ready for the game.

“I don’t know if we can be too keyed up for Pella,” he said. “I just know our kids have to come out relaxed and be confident in their play. We were scratching our heads about some of the mistakes we made last week that we hadn’t made all fall long.

“We have a lot of inexperienced players and even some of our seniors are not real experienced on the varsity level. We’ve got a game under our belt and we should be ready to go.”

Senior back Marcus Haustein led Pella last week against Washington with 146 yards rushing and two touchdowns. Junior quarterback Blaine Forsythe ran for 39 yards and scored a touchdown while completing 15 of 21 passes for 129 yards.

His favorite target was senior receiver Steven Overgergen, who hauled in nine passes for 83 yards.

Schumacher is concerned how balanced Pella was against the Demons, totalling 364 yards of offense and how his team matches up with the Little Dutch.

“Forsythe is back along with a good running back and they’ve got some big kids up front,” Schumacher said. “They’ve got some good football players back from last year. Our kids will be prepared and Pella’s a good football team. We’re going to try and get after them pretty good.

“I don’t think a lot of teams are going to match up with them in their district or anywhere. They’re a big football team with big tackles, big, tall tight end. We have to make sure up front, we stay a lot lower than they do. We also have to play defense a lot better than we did last week. That’s a big emphasis for us. We have to be a lot lower up front defensively so we can keep the offensive linemen off our linebackers.”

Oskaloosa’s defense gave up 364 yards to Grinnell with 285 of that coming on the ground.

Senior linebackers Kyle Ford and Quinton VandeStroet led the defense with 16 and nine tackles respectively. Senior defensive back Wiebe Goodyk and and senior linebacker Scott Fogle both had eight tackles.

Someone will have to take over Fogle’s spot as Schumacher said the senior will probably miss the rest of the season with a shoulder injury.

Schumacher said the team is ready to go.