Week Six Home Team Friday Recap

I am on vacation here in Kansas City, but because I know a few of you very nice peeps enjoy my high school football recaps, I will deliver for you.  By the way, if you are ever in KC, Gates BBQ is just out of this world.  I am addicted, and if anyone wants to make some money, we should open up a Gates restaurant in Evansville!!  We would be rich!  Oh and one other thing before I get to football.  Every time I come here, I wonder what it would be like to do sports in this city.  You could argue that KC has the worst NFL and MLB teams!  That would be rough to have to do stories on them every night.  Great fans though, and fantastic stadiums. 

I try to write as much as I can about each school.  As always, any and all feedback is very much appreciated.  Especially if there is a school, player, or topic you want me to focus on in the future. 

I will start with Memorial.  The Tigers put together their best game of the season.  I was pretty unsure of how the Catholic Rivalry would play out.  I was at the Tigers practice last week.  You could really get a sense that Memorial had found its identity.  After a team has a season like last year, it is easy for fans, and even the school to get caught up in repeating the same success.  However, Memorial lost so many great players from that 2008 team.  Perhaps the greatest challenge for the Tigers is an all-new offensive line.  I asked Grant Gribbins how the new line was coming along.  He emphatically told me how great they have played and how well the offense was syncing up. 

I could write a whole blog on Gribbins.  He is really enjoyable to watch play.  He can throw every pass.  He throws great on the run.  He has a big arm, and I have seen countless of times how he can really put nice touch on the ball.  How a D-I school hasn’t offered him a scholarship blows my mind.  I gave up on trying figuring out recruiting years ago.  How not a single school in D-I took a shot on Mater Dei’s Jake Schiff I will never know. 

Back to the game, Memorial really put together 4 great quarters of football.  The Tigers are clicking, and that really will make for an awesome 3A Sectional.  Mater Dei head coach Mike Goebel told us he was worried about the upcoming schedule.  As he put it: ‘Murder’s Row’…Memorial, Mt. Vernon, Castle, and Reitz.  The Cats are still in great shape.  They are playing so many young guys that are learning and getting better every week. 

BREAKING NEWS FROM CENTRAL STADIUM: Reitz just scored again!  Good grief.  I said last week that Reitz was putting it together.  Well, I guess you can put an exclamation point on that.  Think about what the Panthers have done in two weeks.  Reitz has gone on the road to two of the best teams in the SIAC and put up 42 points at Castle, and 55 points at Central!! 

I knew I was going to lead Home Team Friday with Reitz at Central.  I never like to lead the show with our Showdown Game.  That way it breaks things up a little bit.  It also gives me a chance while Randall is on the air to get any last second scores, shot-sheets, or script changes from my producer Jason.  I also knew that Ryan Jenkins was our photographer for the Reitz/Central game.  This was only the third week he has ever shot games.  I put a little pressure on him to make sure he had great stuff since it was the lead game.  Did you see how awesome his highlights were?  Fantastic job by Ryan!  We had so many great plays from that game; we left a few out due to time constraints!  Typically a set of highlights runs between :45 seconds and 1:00.  We had so much great stuff, it ran 1:45.  Props to Ryan.

Matt McIntosh was one big highlight reel.  Throwing tight spirals all over the field, and running all over the Bears’ defense.  Did you see that block by Jeff Hudson on the second touchdown?!  He had the perfect angle and just erased the safety opening up the lane for McIntosh to score.   Central has been dominant in victory, and not so much in defeat.  In the four Bears’ wins their average score is 39-24.  In the two losses they are outscored:  43-7.  It doesn’t get any easier for the Bears as they have Memorial this week.

Castle rebounded nicely from the loss to Reitz.  I thought the Knights might have trouble at Bosse.  Give credit to Coach Hurt and his staff for erasing that week five performance, and putting together a nice gameplan against the Dogs.  Kyle Pitlick carried the load for the Castle ground game.  The Knights have Harrison next, then the Saturday showdown with Mater Dei at the Bowl.  It’s another tough loss for the Dogs.  Keep your head up Bosse!

I went outside the city this past week.  I traveled to Boonville for the Mt. Vernon game.  It was an important game in the Big Eight.  Clearly, Jasper will run away with the title, but the fight to see who is second best is pretty interesting.  It was homecoming for the Pioneers, and their bleachers were full.  Since this was my first time seeing Boonville in person, I didn’t realize how much the Pioneers run the ball.  It was the fastest first quarter!  The Pioneers run a lot of misdirection.  It is really tough to figure out who has the ball.  I like the 1-2 punch of Kyle Whitten and Jacob Winsett.  They are physical, and can really get after it. 

I have to tell this story.  Boonville is on the one yard line getting ready to score the first touchdown of the game.  I am in the corner of the endzone.  Shooting one yard touchdowns are just the worst from a visual standpoint.  There is nothing to them.  Half of the time you cannot find the ball in the mass of humanity in the middle.  So I am zooming in trying to make sure I have the right player.  Then I nearly die.  No joke!  The Army was there…I assume recruiting.  They had a real cannon just a few feet from me.  I had NO IDEA it was there.  So as I am focusing in on who scores BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!  I really thought al Qaeda just bombed Boonville.  My heart literally stopped.  I swear, I thought I was dead.  When I realized what happened, and I knew I was still alive my next thought was, “I hope I didn’t lose control of my bowels!”  Luckily, for everyone near me, I did not.  It honestly took me a good 45 minutes for my heart to beat correctly. 

Anyhow, my clean underwear aside, the Pioneers put up 40 points on Mt. Vernon.  James Blankenship’s club is now 5-1.  They have Princeton next, so that should be win number six on the season.  I still didn’t get a good feel for Mt. Vernon.  The Pioneers dominated the time of possession while I was there.  I think MV would have benefited with a drier track.  The timing on passing plays was off with the sloppy field. 

One nice thing about being in Boonville is I could listen to two of my favorite radio guys.  Southridge’s Kurt Gutgsell and Jasper’s Walt Ferber are two of the best.  Both of them called very lopsided games.  The Raiders took care of Tell City 31-14, and Jasper really dominated Princeton in the first half.  The Cats won 46-0.  While I was listening to WITZ, Ferber was saying that Princeton had 2 personal foul calls, the last was roughing the holder on an extra point, and it was maybe getting a bit chippy.  Jasper was up 40-0 at the time, and then my radio started breaking up.  I believe Jasper may have recovered an onsides kick, or maybe Princeton fumbled, but it sounded like it got kind of ugly. 

The entire radio station dynamic has really changed for us.  Before the internet, we would bug the radio stations all of the time trying to get scores.  Now with our online scoreboard, the roles have reversed a bit.   Most of the radio stations now use us for their scoreboard mentions.  It is really a great two-way relationship now between HTF and all of the Tri-State radio stations.  I thank all of them for helping us out, and I hope they appreciate our live online scoreboard.

I did not want to miss getting highlights of the South Spencer game.  The Rebels were at Pike Central.  So I sent a photographer to shoot that game as well as Mt. Carmel at Washington.  Both South Spencer and Mt. Carmel were impressive on the road.  The Golden Aces are really improved from last year.  Quarterback Alex Hale is running the option well.  The Aces will have all they can handle and more this week as Jasper visits the Snake Pit.  I know firsthand, there is no love lost between the two schools.

The Rebels are now 6-0 with the 43-0 shutout of the Chargers.  They should probably beat Forest Park this week, then end the season at Boonville, then at home against arch rival Heritage Hills.  It will be an interesting end to the regular season for Bruce Green’s team.  The Rebels have only given up 13 points a game this season.

North Posey and Heritage Hills both rolled to victories in the PAC.  The Patriots have Southridge at The Jungle this Friday.

In Kentucky, you had to feel sorry for Ohio County.  The Eagles could not have had a worse schedule.  It was already going to be a major challenge for Ohio County to win at Owensboro.  Then you add the fact that the Devils were stinging mad from their first loss to Bowling Green.  The end result: Owensboro wins 63-0.  This week Owensboro is at Christian County for another tough game.

Henderson County wins again.  The Colonels had an old fashioned slugfest with rival Daviess County.   There was only one touchdown the whole game, and luckily our HTF camera was there when it happened!  The Colonels led 9-0 at the half.  Believe it or not, that ended up being the final score.

Apollo and Owensboro Catholic both had nice victories as well.   The Aces won at home against Henry County, and the Eagles at Marshall County.

Our Showdown Game is in Kentucky this Friday.  Hopkins Central takes on rival Madisonville.  Both schools are better known for basketball, but don’t let that fool you.  They can play some pigskin as well!  It should be a great night in Hopkins County.

I am going to enjoy my final two days off here in Kansas City.  I am going to see Dave Matthews Band tomorrow night (shocker I know).  Then it is back to work on Friday!  I can’t wait to cover more football.  I hope there are some close games. 

Any questions, comments, or anything specific you would like me to talk about, leave a comment below.  As always, thanks for reading and watching, and I will see everyone at 10:35 Friday night for HTF!