By Whitman McGee
After a dominating 48-6 blowout victory against Green Oaks last week (their 500th all-time regular-season win) the Minden High Crimson Tide has no time to celebrate.
They’ll be too focused on preparing for their intense rivalry matchup against a talented North Webster Knights team.
At first glance, the Tide looked to have played near-perfect football. However, as is with any team only two weeks into the season, there is plenty of room for improvement.
“We’re going to continue to emphasize tackling,” Coach Spencer Heard told The Journal. “I think we need to focus and work on the passing game a little bit as well so we can get a bit more efficient in that area.”
Dating back to the 2015 season, Minden has seen its fair share of success against the Knights. The Tide has a 5-1 record in the last six games.
North Webster will surely offer an intriguing challenge this year, as they boast a 2-0 record (both victories coming rather handily) going into Friday night’s showdown at W.W. Williams Stadium.
Coach Heard made note of senior North Webster linebacker Jatereon Robinson who has been a central piece of the Knight defense. “#44 (Robinson) is making a lot of their tackles on defense,” the coach said.
With all of the excitement that a home rivalry game brings, it’s easy to lose focus on the task at hand. Coach Heard realizes that, saying, “With a rivalry game like this, where a lot of these kids know each other, you have to talk about controlling emotions. You want them to play with passion and energy, but at the same time we want to let our play do the talking and not get caught up in the emotional stuff.”
Though the magnitude may appear to change for this particular game, every match is of equal importance to the Tide, and this one is no exception.
“It’s a fun situation,” Heard said. “I think it’s going to be an intense game.
Action from this much-anticipated face-off begins this Friday at 7 p.m. If you can’t make it to “The Pit” on Friday night, the Journal encourages you to tune in to 104.5 KBEF for radio coverage of the game.
