Crawfordsville football will see a familiar opponent as they open Class 3A Sectional 28 play on the road tonight. The Athenians drew Sagamore Conference foe Western Boone (5-4, 3-3 SAC) who will be making their Class 3A playoff debut after winning three straight 2A State championships. Back on Sep. 3, the Stars took home a 49-6 win over Crawfordsville (1-8,1-6) who is coming off their first win of the season, an 18-8 win over Frankfort last week.
“There’s no substitute quite like winning a football game,” Crawfordsville coach Kurt Schlicher said. “We’ve enjoyed having some success and our kids have done a good job with moving forward, knowing we have another opportunity this week. We’ll need to come out and play our best on Friday night for sure.”
In that Sep. 3 loss, the Stars scored on their first play of the game as Garrett Morton caught a 44-yard touchdown pass. Schlicher knows it will be another big challenge against a heavily favored Stars team.
“We have a lot of respect for Western Boone,” he said. “Everybody in the area knows the kind of success that they have had. Our main focus heading in will be more on ourselves and trying to play the best football game we can play. For us this a chance to gauge to see how much we’ve improved since week three. We’re excited about the challenge. They are a familiar opponent so we’re going to go out there and see what we can do.”
In the week three loss, the Stars tallied 392 total yards; 219 on the ground and 173 through the air. Too many big plays allowed the Stars to pounce on the Athenians early on, and that’s been a focus this week for Schlicher and his squad.
“They are a strong team across the board,” he said. “Both phases on offense they do exremely well. You also can’t overlook how important special teams is also. That was a big reason for last week’s win for us. In the end for us if we want to win, we’ll have to limit those big plays, because we dug ourselves an early hole. We know something negative will happen on Friday night, it’s how we react to it will dicate how the rest of the game goes.”
The winner between the Athenians and Stars will host the winner of Hamilton Heights (6-3) and Guerin Catholic (2-7).
