Martin County West football fell behind after a strong start to drop the home opener 35-12 to Adrian-Ellsworth on Friday. 

MCW led 6-0 and 12-7 before the Dragons took the lead for good. Mavericks head coach Tom Elliott says they will continue to improve.

"The run game is something that was absent last week but showed up this week. That's something we had concentrated on all week and so hopefully we can continue to build on that and the passing game can come off of that and everything starts to flow and becomes a little more efficient offensively," said Elliott. "On defense, we just have to clean up the things in the secondary. It puts you in a hole where it's tough to dig yourself out. This a young team. We have some experience out there but we've got a lot of new faces in key positions. They're learning on the fly. It's a long season. We still have six games left in it. As long as we keep doing that we need to be ready for playoff football and that's what we're concentrating on." 

MCW is 0-2 with a road trip to Tracy-Milroy-Balaton this Friday. The Panthers are 1-1 after a win over Dawson-Boyd and loss to Sleepy Eye United so far. Pregame is at 6:45 with kickoff at 7:00 on Xtreme Country.