Superior’s 66-8 drubbing of host Plains on the Horsemen’s home field Friday night answered a lot of area eight-man football questions.

Such as, will Superior be able to replace a talented senior class and continue its recent streak of dominance on 80-yards of grass and chalk?

Answer: Yup!

Will a new head coach and a team heavy with young players be a work in progress?

Yup!

One thing cannot be disputed following the rout on the rain-soaked turf at Plains High, Decker Milender is a fast guy who can really run and score from all over the field.

The 5-7, 155-pound junior Milender, part of a seemingly endless line of Superior High athletes with the same surname, chewed up the Horsemen defense from start to finish.

With just under 10 minutes to play in the opening quarter, Milender snared a crisp pass from junior quarterback Orion Plakke and romped 30 yards into the end zone for the season’s first touchdown. A successful two-point after touchdown run by sophomore Lucas Kovalsky put the Bobcats ahead 8-0.

Less than two minutes later, after the swarming Superior defense smothered Plains’ first drive of the year, Milender hauled in a 72-yard touchdown strike from Plakke.

Plakke, a 6-2 junior starting his first game at quarterback, showed he is an out-of-this-world replacement for the now graduated Bryan Mask.

Another successful PAT, this one a pass from Plakke to Milender, put the Cats up 16-0 with 8:16 still to play in the first quarter.

After being stymied once again by the Superior defense, Plains gambled on a fake punt that went nowhere and gave the Bobcats the ball on the Horsemen 31-yard line.

A couple plays latter, Plakke hooked up with Kovalsky on a 31-yard scoring strike, the third touchdown pass of the game for the new QB. Another positive outcome on the PAT attempt put Superior up 24-0 with 6:23 to play in the opening quarter and the rout was on.

It only got worse for Plains a few seconds later when the home team punt was shanked and scooped up by Milender who outran everyone on his way to his third TD of the first quarter. This time the point after touchdown attempt failed, leaving the visitors with a 30-0 lead.

That lead grew again when Kovalsky picked off a pass from Plains junior quarterback Mason Elliot giving Superior another possession deep in Horsemen territory.

A few plays and a first down later, Plakke threw his fourth touchdown pass of the opening quarter when he lofted a 25-yarder to Kovalsky. The run for PAT failed, leaving the Bobcats with a 36-0 lead.

Before the quarter ended, Plains pulled a play out of the trick playbook when they again tried a fake punt, this one good for a first down as time ran out in quarter number one.

On the first play of the second quarter, freshman Darren Standeford flipped a pass to Plains standout junior Garth Parker, a 6-2, 235-pounder who held on to the ball and blazed a path into the end zone from 56 yards out. Parker then converted the PAT on a run, giving the Horsemen their first score of the season.

The fuzzy feeling from that score evaporated on the kickoff when Milender snared the ball and once again left the Horsemen defenders grabbing air as he swooped by on his way to the end zone and a 44-8 lead. The score was enough to enact the Mercy Rule, by which the time clock keeps running to help prevent big leads from getting even bigger.

Milender, whose number 25 was forever etched into the memory of fans and opposing players alike, made it five TDs on the night when he broke loose on a 33-yard run, a score that when coupled with a PAT pass from Plakke to Kovalsky boosted the Bobcats to a dominating 52-8 lead.

With rain falling, the clock continuing to run, reserve players seeing some action and the misery mounting for the young Horsemen and their rookie head coach, Milender put the finishing touches on his explosive night when he scooted into the Plains end zone on a 9-yard, third quarter TD romp.

With the score at 60-8, sophomore running back Owen Doyle closed out the Superior landslide with a 7-yard touchdown run in the waning moments of the fourth quarter.

That score came with just 17 seconds left on the clock and sealed the 66-8 lopsided win for Superior.

Milender wound up with an unofficial 179 yards total on his six touchdowns, while Plakke finished with four touchdown passes and put to rest questions about who would fill the shoes of Mask, who led the Bobcats to the 8-man playoffs in each of the seasons he was at the helm of Superior’s explosive offense.

Superior coach Jeff Schlultz was happy with his team’s play in the season opener.

“The defense was the most exciting part of last night,” Schultz said. “We are doing new things on that side of the ball and the kids have really picked it up.”

Schultz also praised the hard off-season work of Milender, Kovalsky and Silas Acker and noted the big improvements all have made to their game.

And he had a heap of praise for Plakke.

“Cool, calm and extremely talented,” he said of his new quarterback. “I don’t believe he had an incomplete pass while throwing six TDs.”

Superior will look to make it a 2-0 start to the season next Saturday when they travel to Victor for a 1 p.m. kickoff, while Plains will take to the road this Friday night for an encounter with the Seeley-Swan Blackhawks.