The Fredericktown and Highland football teams have similar motivations going into Friday night’s meeting in Sparta: they're both coming off Week 1 losses.
The Freddies are looking for their first win over the Scots since 2013. Highland won last year’s meeting 42-6 in Fredericktown.
Unlike past years, coaches don’t have a lot of game tape at their disposal. There’s one game and a scrimmage.
“Typically, we play them mid-season, so we’d have three films on them for sure, maybe four,” Highland coach Matt Jones said. “It’s definitely not as much as we’re accustomed to, but it’s better than nothing, I guess.”
The Scots are featuring a new spread offense.
“Traditionally, they’ve always been a Wing-T,” Fredericktown coach Will Hartley said. “But one thing that is consistent is that they have physical kids up front and they can take up a lot of space.”
There is one thing Hartley learned from the Freddies’ 34-7 loss to East Knox last week.
“Hopefully, from the first half, the team understands that they can compete with the teams in this league,” he said. “That’s definitely a positive that we can take from the game against East Knox.”
Fredericktown was tied with East Knox 7-7 when the game was stopped with 2:49 to go in the first half. When play resumed the next day, the Freddies made it to the locker room still tied.
The Freddies gained momentum at the start of the second half by recovering a loose squib kick. But they couldn’t take advantage of it and East Knox rallied for four touchdowns in the second half.
“We just have to become a much more physical team at the point of attack,” Hartley said. “That was quite evident in the second half.”
Highland had a 6-0 lead in the first quarter at Cardington on Aug. 28. But quarterback Nate Hickman threw for three touchdowns and ran for another as the Pirates rolled to a 30-14 win.
“We made a lot of mistakes on both sides of the ball,” Jones said. “We gotta execute and we’ve gotta do a better job with our game plan and we’ve gotta do a better job with our preparation. But we had a really good practice (on Aug. 31)— the kids responded and that was good to see.”
Jeremiah McKinley had 7.5 tackles, including one for-loss to lead the Freddies against the Bulldogs.
Ben Mast scored Fredericktown’s lone touchdown against East Knox on a 1-yard run in the opening quarter.
Kadin Johnson threw for two touchdowns, both to Landon Remmert. Johnson finished 14-for-25 for 166 yards and Remmert caught five balls for 59 yards. Wyatt Hornsby had 10 tackles, including 2.5 for-loss to lead the Scots against Cardington.
The Scots and the Freddies are scheduled to kick off at 7 p.m.
