The Wayne State College Football team is set to open its season Thursday, Aug. 30 at 6 p.m. at Bob Cunningham Field versus the Winona State Warriors. The Wildcats graduated 21 seniors last year after finishing the season with a record of 6-5.

In addition to graduating so many players from last year’s squad, the offseason presented more challenges as the Wildcats had to work around the construction of the new press box.

“The construction kind of threw a crimp into all of that because there is no air conditioning over here, and there’s no hot water in the locker room and we didn’t have access to the weight room for most of the summer, so that made it hard in terms of a normal offseason for us,” head coach Dan McLaughlin said. “They worked out in the student locker room over in the Rec Center so we made the best of not a great situation.”

Along with focusing on developing returning players, McLaughlin said the staff focused on bringing in experienced players during the offseason.

“Wasn’t so much improvement as a replacement,” McLaughlin said. “A key area for us was offensive line because we only had one returning starter, Marquise Jones.” Jones is a junior at Wayne State playing left guard on the offensive line. Last year he started in five of the 11 games, but played in all 11.

Freshman Mason Lee, is a native of Wayne who plays wide receiver for the Wildcats, said there is good senior leadership among the team.

“It’s pretty fun [to be a freshman on the team],” Lee said. “There’s a lot of older guys that help us out.”

The Wildcats will have 11 regular season games this year, including a tough opponent, Minnesota State.

“They (Minnesota State) are the team that has had the most consistent success over the last few years,” McLaughlin said.

Although the Wildcats have not had a normal offseason with the construction, they still believe they can reach the goals they have set as a team.

“The first game is always the hardest, so we’ll try to get that one out of the way,” Lee said. “[Our goal is] to make the playoffs for sure.”

Though the Wildcats are young, they said they believe they have the talent to allow them to reach their goals for this season.