NEW ULM, MINN. – This location of this great burg of German heritage has a tendency to be described as southwestern Minnesota. I don’t buy that, since research shows that television first arrived here in 1948, and the signal came from KSTP-TV, Ch. 5, in St. Paul.

If you were in a town close enough to the Twin Cities to get a first glimpse of television from there, sorry, you’re not true “southwestern Minnesota.” You’re merely the undefinable southern edge of west-central Minnesota.

Because, if you’re true southwestern Minnesota, you didn’t get television until 1953 at the earliest, and with an antenna high enough to bring down small airplanes being required to capture the signal from KELO-TV (Ch. 11) in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Landers on this side of the border will always be the true southwest Minnesotans.

Now that we have straightened out that issue, let’s get to the details of Friday night’s high school football contest on what turned into a gorgeous evening at Johnson Field.

Teams representing the New Ulm Cathedral Greyhounds and the Wabasso Rabbits have been making the 43-mile commute to compete against one another in nearly all sports forever.

This included football until 2023, when Cathedral bowed to the fact that traditional opponents with similar enrollments had moved to nine-player football and joined them.

By enrollment, the Rabbits also could have been playing the nine-man game for a couple of decades, but there are few small towns with a generational collection of families more proud and supportive of their school and the ability to compete than Wabasso.

“The old-timers were really a tough sell for a move to nine-man,” coach Joe Kemp said. “Many of our traditional opponents had switched, and we were left in 1A, playing schools like Windom and Springfield. We were just outmanned.

“We were in a state semifinal in ’16 and the Prep Bowl in ’17, but there were years after that when our number of players was in the 20s.”

Kemp quit as the coach after 2020 but then returned in 2024. And the mighty Rabbits are now playing nine-player for the first time — which put Cathedral back on the schedule.

“We’ve got 36 players this fall,” Kemp said. “That’s the most we’ve had in a while.”

The number of players for Denny Lux, in his 32nd season at Cathedral, was 28 in Friday’s game program. The Greyhounds had started 1-2, with a decisive loss to Cedar Mountain the previous week, and were underdogs against the nine-player newbies, the 3-0 Rabbits.

The site was Johnson Field, the long-used football stadium that sits between the two ballparks in this Home of the Steinbachs (and other baseball greats) — Johnson Park, and now the revamped Mueller Field.

And a grand football field it is, even though the New Ulm public school has abandoned it for an artificial turf stadium “up on the hill” to call its own.

Fifty minutes before kickoff, only a smattering of fans had arrived, a dozen on the far side for Wabasso, maybe 50 in the grandstand on the home side. And then, presto, here they came — turning it into a genuine “Friday Night Lights” in outstate Minnesota.

The grandstand was full, 500-plus, and so were the rows of bleachers on the visitors side. The fact that it was homecoming — early, but the three high schools in New Ulm (Catholic, Lutheran, public) make sure not to hold that football celebration on the same weekend — might have helped.

Drew Kemp, the coach’s son and sophomore quarterback, led the Rabbits to a touchdown on their opening drive, and then they scored another to take a 12-0 lead early in the second quarter.

Cathedral had regained Adrian Henry, a standout running back and track man, for the first time since he tore a knee ligament during the 2024 season. And that made a difference, as he finished a touchdown drive in the first half, and then contributed to another that gave the Greyhounds a 14-12 lead in the third quarter.

That touchdown and two-pointer brought a scene that warmed the heart of a crusty first-time visitor to Cathedral football. The kids there with Cathedral parents and/or supervisors — ages maybe 13 to one small fellow spotted earlier playing in some mud as Mom shook her head in resignation — came charging from everywhere to behind goal posts.

And when the Greyhounds succeeded with a two-point conversion, they broke in unison into jumping jacks, counting as they did to 14.

“Our young kids have been doing that for a long time,” Lux said. “Our state championship team in 2010, they were wearing out those kids with 40 or 50 jumping jacks a few times.”

The 2010 team was honored at halftime with 20 or so of those players showing up. Cathedral actually took a 20-12 lead, before Wabasso rallied, with Joe Rohlik (you can’t have a Rabbits team without a Rohlik) scoring the winner on a late 5-yard run.

Final: Wabasso 26, Cathedral 20.

Allowing the proud Wabasso generations in the southern edge of west-central Minnesota to boast that their Rabbits have never lost a nine-player football game.