North Montgomery football has put together a very successful regular season. The Chargers were narrowly defeated by Danville 23-20 last week to end the regular season with a 5-4 record. However the Chargers earned a tie for third in the Sagamore Conference and won themselves a county title this season. Charger coach Josh Thompson always preaches county, conference and the sectional to his team as their main goals. North has done well in two of the three and now the third goal is right in front of them when North Montgomery opens up the Class 3A Sectional 29 on Friday with a Sagamore Conference re-match against the Western Boone Stars who will once again make the trip to Charger field.
The Stars ended the regular season with a 6-3 mark and tied the Chargers with a 4-3 mark in SAC play along with Lebanon. WeBo defeated the Tigers in OT last week 27-21. Back on Sep. 15 North Montgomery picked up a 20-17 win over the Stars in what was their first win since 2014 vs WeBo. Now the Chargers will look to do it again on Friday.
“We’re going to make sure we’re cleaning up some of the mistakes we made last week against Danville first and foremost,” Charger coach Josh Thompson said. “Danville and WeBo run similar things and we’ve already seen WeBo so we know what to expect because we’ll go back and watch our film against them. Webo is a good team and they’re going to fix their mistakes that they had against us. We’re quickly going to have to recognize and tweaks that they’ve made and adjust ourselves.”
Back on that Sep. 15 matchup, which was also at North, the Chargers re-gained the lead three different times in that gutty win. After the Charger defense forced a three-and-out, their offense kept the ball for a 14-play drive that took seven minutes and 31 seconds off the clock to ice the game.
WeBo junior QB Brandon Potter has completed just 58 of 114 passes this season for 698 yards. The Stars workhorse has been senior fullback and linebacker Cannon Brunes. Brunes has been banged up the last few weeks with an ankle injury, but he’s still the Stars leading rusher with 541 yards on 86 carries and eight TD’s. Jacob Smith has also gotten 90 carries for 388 yards as a team WeBo has rushed for 1,627 yards and 180.8 per game. Marcus Fortner is the Stars leading receiver with 21 catches for 214 yards. Brunes has added 105 tackles on defense and 23 for loss.
“We’re taking the approach this of having our normal routine and trying to not doing anything out of the ordinary,” Thompson said of his teams sectional week prep. “We’re approaching this like a new opponent and whatever happened in the past we have to let go and make sure we’re focused on this week. A good thing is we’re already familiar with some things we want to do which makes this nice in that area.”
North Montgomery was right at a 50-50 run-pass split during the regular season in terms of yards. Senior QB Ross Dyson threw for 1,276 yards on 92-166 (55.8%) and 12 TD’s. The Charger ground game tallied 1,214 yards on the season led by Dyson’s 503. Junior WR Kelby Harwood is the teams leading pass catcher with 446 yards.
“If we focus on the process that we’ve stuck to all season than the outcome will continue to take care of itself,” Thompson said. “These seniors and these kids want to keep playing and to get a sectional win is always important. Our kids are ready and we have to go and take care of business.”
The Stars and Chargers will kick things off at 7 p.m. from Charger field. You can catch a live broadcast of the game on 103.9 WIMC beginning at 6:30 as Deontae Peete and Codey Emerson will have the call.
