The Crawfordville Athenians will host the Yorktown Tigers (3-6) in their sectional opener Friday. Crawfordsville enters the Class 3A section 28 playoff game with a 0-9 record. Despite the record, Coach Kurt Schlicher has seen improvements in his team each and every week.
Yorktown will provide the Athenians with an unfamiliar opponent as this will be the first time the teams will square off against one another.
“Yorktown plays a lot of 4A schools and that’s probably indicative of their record,” Schlicher said. “They have some good size and what we saw on film was that they are better defensively than offensively. For us we just have to build off the good defensive effort that we put forth last Friday.”
Turnovers plagued the Crawfordsville in last week’s 22-8 loss against Frankfort. The Athenians turned the ball over six times. Five of those six turnovers were interceptions and Schlicher knows that if his team is to stay in the game against the Tigers, they will have to limit those and some of the self-inflicted wounds.
“We re-watched our game film against Frankfort and realized that we are still shooting ourselves in the foot,” Schlicher said. “This week we’re just trying to correct those mistakes and be more efficient with knowing and executing our assignments. If we play good defense like last week, then I think we will give ourselves a good chance to win the game.”
The Tigers will rely on senior running back Jamarius Evans who has carried the ball 165 times for 772 and 10 touchdowns on the season.
The Athenians will be looking for their first win in the sectional since 2007.
The game is scheduled to kickoff at 7:30 p.m. at Crawfordsville High School.
