By RANDY GONZALES

rgonzales@dailynews.net

One of Jon Borer's two daughters, Emily, turns 1 on Friday.

Borer, who will coach his first game at Thomas More Prep-Marian that night, would like nothing more than to give her a victory as a birthday present.

He's ready, and thinks his team is ready as well, for the 7 p.m. game at Ellinwood.

"It feels great," said Borer, a head coach for the first time. "Just ready to go out there and see what we can do against another team."

It's back to the future at Ellinwood, where Monte Doll returns as the head coach. Doll shared head coaching duties with Bill Maddy from 2001-05, winning three league and two district crowns. Doll went into administration, and took a year off from coaching, then returned as the school's defensive coordinator.

Now, he's back as the head coach and defensive coordinator, and Maddy is back on the sideline for the first time since '05 as the offensive coordinator.

"At the start of the year I was a little nervous and leery, whether I wanted it or not," Doll said.

"I still have the fire."

Doll also has a 4-4 defense he hopes will disrupt the Monarchs' spread offense.

"The thing that makes me feel better, I won't be blindsided Friday night, in that I saw their scrimmage Saturday night," Doll said. "And they watched us scrimmage Thursday."

Doll wants to make the Monarchs hesitant on offense.

"My whole goal is to try to make them uncomfortable," Doll said. "They've only been in it basically three weeks.

"There's got to be some questions in there," he added.

Doll had to re-think his plans for the Eagles' flexbone attack. Doll planned on junior Marcus Brown taking the snaps, but he got hurt in preseason. Instead, senior Kyle Corbett will be at quarterback.

Junior Nick Hammeke won the quarterback battle in camp for the Monarchs. Borer wants to use senior Nathan Zimmerman, the other upperclassman QB, as a starter on defense, and start him on offense as a receiver, where he can take some plays off.

Last year, Hammeke became the starter at QB in the third week and passed for more than 600 yards, with four touchdowns and six interceptions.

"Doll is an experienced coach; he knows what he's doing," Borer said. "... I expect their kids ready to play. ... I expect us ready to play as well. I expect a good game."

Borer preaches perfection, but knows stuff happens.

"First game out, first week, teams are always going to do things," Borer said.

"... With any new team -- NFL, college -- there are going to be slipups Week 1. But I think we are strong enough we will be able to handle that adversity and move forward."

Borer said stopping Ellinwood's offense mainly comes down to one thing for his 3-5 defense.

"The biggest part is just a matter of execution," he said. "Any time they play option offense you have to be disciplined, assignment football."

Whatever happens, Borer knows what he expects out of his players.

"We want to have hustle, fly around the field," he said. "If we can execute and just play hard from kickoff, all 48 minutes -- just play hard."

The season opener also is the league opener in the new-look Mid-Central Activities Association. TMP and Larned joined the MCAA after the Mid-State Activities Association disbanded after last school year. Ellinwood and Hoisington remained in the watered-down MCAA after other schools left.

"We talked to the kids about it's the first league game in a brand new league," Borer said. "Let's go out there and show people TMP is going to play hard.

"We're here, we're going to play hard, we're going to do the right things and we're going to execute," he added.

Borer was known for having a batch of trick plays when he was offensive coordinator at Lourdes Central Catholic in Nebraska. He just smiled when asked if he had time to install any trick plays for the season opener. He had a one-word reply.

"Maybe."