WIAA Football preview: Lake Mills tussles with West Salem for spot in state championship game
LAKE MILLS — If the L-Cats’ defense continues to make plays, there will be plenty of reasons to continue flashing the double thumbs-down sign. That sign, taken from the film Gladiator, has been a rallying cry for Lake Mills’ football team, which faces West Salem in a WIAA Division 4 Level 4 game on Friday at 7 p.m. at Stoughton High School for the right to play at Camp Randall Stadium in the state finals. “We’ve been doing the thumbs down gesture since week three against Lakeside,” senior wide receiver and linebacker Blake Bohlman said. “Coach Tyler Huber pulls up a movie clip every week and it’s kind of a theme we roll with. We watched the scene where a thumbs up and he lets them live and thumbs down, he finishes them. It’s a reminder to not get complacent.” Defensive end and tight end JP Brzowski, another one of the team’s 14 seniors, said the thumbs-down sign is about showing no mercy. “It’s been our mentality,” Brzowski said. “We never want to let them have any hope.” To reach their first-ever Level 4 game in the modern era — and second state semifinal in school history (1987) — the
