MoWest and Northwest Missouri state football teams speak at MIAA Football Media Day with new season approaching

TOPEKA, Ks. (KQTV) - Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas hosted the 2026 MIAA Football Media Day Monday morning.

Members of both the Northwest Missouri State and MoWest teams spoke about their outlook on the season.

Let's start with the Northwest Bearcats, who kick off the season August 29th at Texas A&M Kingsville. The Bearcats were picked to finish second in the conference in the MIAA Coaches poll and first in the media poll.

Northwest surprised some people last season by clinching a share of the MIAA title just one year after going 6-5. No chip on the team's shoulder this time around. That's been replaced with a bullseye. Second-year head coach John McMenamin says this time it's about how this Bearcats squad will respond with getting every team's best shot.

"The motivation is like defining who those leaders are, defining how tough we'll be, defining how when we fail or when mistakes happen and how well we've overcome those," said McMenamin. "I thought last year we were really good at that. That's the motivation of saying, okay, how much tougher can we get now and then how can we solve problem solve together as a group?"

"I think as a team this is something that we got recruited here for. This is something that we're not scared of," said junior offensive lineman Kaleb McCullough. "It's not something we think wouldn't happen. "I think after having that winning year last year as a team, we're going to embrace it and we're going to understand that we're going to get every team's best every week and that they want to do whatever they can to take the Bearcats out."

On MoWest's side of things, the Griffins start the season Thursday night on August 27th hosting Augustana. MoWest is coming off a 3-8 season and were picked to finish ninth in the MIAA in both Coaches and Media polls.

Head coach Tyler Fenwick enters his 4th season as head coach of the Griffs. MoWest has an ongoing quarterback battle right now that they still need to figure out, but Fenwick says he likes this team's depth heading into the fall camp, and that will help this group if the injury bug happens again this year.

"We were to the point where we didn't have the next guys up because we were just too young. But now we've been able to develop a bunch of guys the last few years, we brought in some transfers," said Fenwick. "So there's just a number of guys that actually have experience in the MIAA or experience playing college football. They're hungry to do whatever they have to do to compete for a job. We can find a way to maybe cross-train some guys and just figure out how to put the best people that we can on the field."

"I don't think we can set our goals too short here. Respectfully balls to the wall. We have to take nothing for granted, no team for granted," said senior offensive lineman Connor Holt. "I'm fully expecting a conference championship out of this team, and I think we have the people to do it. Whether or not we put that together is going to be up to us."