Running the football, chewing up yards and the clock with points scored at the end of each drive is what all teams want to do on a Friday night.
Nothing different is expected in the game plans for Iola High’s Mustangs and Central Heights High’s Vikings when the two teams square off in Pioneer League play on the Vikings’ field Friday. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
“By design, Central Heights’ defense stacks the box (line of scrimmage tackle to tackle) and takes away running offenses,” said Doug Kerr, Mustang head coach. “Offensively, we’re going to take what they give us.”
Kerr pointed out that it depended on which Viking team shows up Friday against the Mustangs.
“Will it be the team that beat Osawatomie or the one that lost to Anderson County last week? They had a great game running the ball against Osawatomie then got beat bad by Anderson County,” Kerr said.
Central Heights High head coach Kent Schulte agreed with that assessment of his Vikings. The Vikings are 2-2 overall and 1-1 in league play. They roared through Osawatomie 38-0 then lost 54-6 to Anderson County last Friday.
“When we run the football, we’re successful but when we struggle to run the ball, we have trouble in a game,” Schulte said. “We worked on being better with ball security the past two weeks.”
The Mustangs are coming off a hard-fought 27-16 win over Prairie View in Pioneer League play last week. They are 3-1 for the first time in a long time and 2-0 in league play.
Iola and Central Heights played each other in 2008 and 2009 in non-league action. The Mustang team won 24-17 in the rain and mud in overtime at Richmond in 2008. In 2009, in Iola, the Mustangs rolled to a 45-0 win.
Central Heights has junior Zach MacAfee at quarterback directing the offense. Senior Drew Beckwith is averaging 125 yards rushing a game as the starting tailback. Junior Tristan Davis is the Vikings’ fullback.
“We’ll show multiple looks offensively but primarily we operate out of the I-formation. We’ll go to a spread and use double tight ends,” Schulte said. “We’re average up front.
“Defensively, we are a 6-2 and morph into a 5-3 look at times.”
Schulte said the Vikings will be without their top tackler senior defensive end Blake Anderson. Anderson appears to have torn his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his knee last week. Also out is senior Kyle Miller with a concussion.
“We need to run the football and we need to stop Iola’s running game and if we can do that, we have a shot at winning the game,” Schulte said.
“It’s homecoming for them (the Vikings) so they’ll be pumped up. We have to be ready,” Kerr said.
