University of Dubuque football coach Stan Zweifel feels the pieces are in place for the Spartans to move into contention in the Iowa Conference race. Dubuque has ten starters back on offense from a team that posted a 4-6 record during an injury-plagued 2010 season.

Zweiful says the most important things is to stay healthy as their top 22 to 28 players are probably as good as anybody in the league, but the caliber drops off after that. Zweifel says the Spartans are a more experienced team even though they only have seven seniors.

He says one of the most rewarding thing is that they made a commitment to recruit area kids and 103 of the 128 teammembers are from a 150 mile radius of Dubuque.

Zweifel says the next step for the program is to beat one of the conference heayweights. He says Central, Wartburg and Coe are teams that have done very well over the years and to make their mark they need to beat one or all of those teams.

Dubuque will open on Thursday night with a visit to Augustana of Illinois.