Crawfordsville and North Montgomery football are two teams hungry for a win.
The Chargers have dropped two-straight, while the Athenians are looking for their first win since 2019 — and will be hoping to secure their first county win since 2016 when the two teams clash on Friday night at Crawfordsville.
“Our biggest advantage this week is that we are playing at home,” Crawfordsville football coach Kurt Schlicher said. “Beating North Montgomery in football has always been a challenge and this year will be just as difficult, but our players are excited about the opportunity.”
North Montgomery owns a 32-21 all-time advantage in 53 meetings, and have won 11 in a row dating back to 2011.
Home field advantage has been kind to the Athenians though in the series. Crawfordsville’s last five wins over North Montgomery have come at home and a 14-13 advantage in the entire series.
The Athenians are 0-5 on the season and 0-3 in SAC play, while North Montgomery is 1-2 overall and 0-2 in league play.
North Montgomery was unable to play Southmont week three due to COVID-19, while Crawfordsville fell to the Mounties 41-14 last week.
“We are ready to play a county game,” North Montgomery coach Josh Thompson said. “It’s always a big rivalry for us and important game for us. We are still focused on continual improvement. We want to be playing our best football at the end of the season and so we are going to stay on that track. We want improvement every day and we want to make sure we don’t go in the wrong direction.
Both teams have used two quarterbacks this season.
North Montgomery’s Donavan Haworth has thrown for 191 yards, while Drew Norman has 190 passing yards. The Chargers, similar to Crawfordsville have struggled to run the ball this season. North Montgomery has just 201 rushing yards in three games, while Crawfordsville has just over 300 yards on the ground through five games.
“Each week during the season presents a new challenge for all teams but no question some have a little more energy,” Schlicher said. “Our kids have done a good job this week of moving on from the emotions of last week and are looking forward to Friday night.”
Thompson knows the Chargers, who gave up 55 points in a loss to Western Boone last week, need to be better defensively, while also taking advantage of things offensively.
“We’ve got to be ready,” he said. “We need to play better defense than we did last week. We need to tackle better than we did. Offensively, we need to make sure we hold onto the football and drive the field and finish with scores this week.”
