Mount Vernon News

CENTERBURG — Week 2 of the high school football season will see area teams play some tough games, but none tougher than Centerburg (1-0), which hosts powerful Newark Catholic (1-0).

Centerburg coach Ken Kish knows the size of the task his team faces on Friday.

“Newark Catholic is Newark Catholic,” said Kish. ”They win games because of who they are sometimes. That’s what they did [winning 13-12 over Amanda-Clearcreek on Friday], and we’re just working hard and trying not to blink. We’re going to play them for all we’ve got.”

Kish knows he has to keep his team focused.

“I don’t worry about who we play or who we don’t play, or how good a team is,” said Kish. ”I”m trying to get our kids to think about and worry about how we play in all of these games. We know that Newark Catholic is a good football team, but we also have to play Johnstown in Game 4, in the first MBC game on their new field. We can’t do anything about it, we have to go play. We are not going to worry about them, except to worry about what they do and how we will stop it.”

Levi Albrecht, who carried the ball 19 times for 238 yards in his first game at quarterback, will lead the Trojan attack. Kish hopes Albrect will have a great game or draw enough of the Green Wave defense toward him that it will open things up for other Trojans, such as running back Cody Griffith.

“Offensively, we’re running an option attack and everything revolves around [Albrecht],” said Kish. “He is, far and away, the fastest guy on our team and one of the strongest. We made a conscious decision to have him touch the ball as much as possible.”

Defensively, Centerburg will have to stop Newark Catholic’s stable of running backs, led by Aaron Shook, who had 83 yards against Amanda Clearcreek.

If they can force Green Wave quarterback Kevin Cox to throw, the Trojans will have a better chance on Friday.

“We want to try to make [Newark Catholic] do what they don’t want to do,” said Kish. “I go into every game wanting to stop the run.”

The 6-foot-3 Cox was 9-of-14 for 107 yards and found four receivers, but was picked off twice by Amanda-Clearcreek’s defense.

Meanwhile, Danville (1-0), coming off of a huge 56-9 win over Lancaster Fisher Catholic, will head to Waynedale (1-0) where the Blue Devils will find a much tougher opponent. With 11 starters coming back from a 9-3 playoff squad, including 2,000 yard rusher Thad Nof’singer, the Golden Bears will be a handful for Blue Devils’ standout Gatlin Ridgway and his teammates, who will be without starting quarterback Marcus Magers. Magers injured his arm during Saturday’s game and is out for the season.

Danville as’sistant coach Charlie Duncan knows that job No. 1 is stopping Nofsinger.

“We are going to have to be aggressive up front and plug the holes on defense without giving up too much,” said Duncan. “On offense, we are going to miss Marcus, but we are going to have to get focused because Waynedale is a tough, tough opponent. Our kids have to put last week behind them because we have a lot of work this week.”

This week East Knox (0-1) is working on fundamentals before the Bulldogs travel to Grandview Heights (0-1), which lost at Utica last week.

“The biggest thing we need to do on offense is to hang on to the football,” said East Knox coach Tom Holton, whose team sufferred five turnovers in last week’s loss to Cardington. “We also put the ball on the ground a couple other times, but we recovered. Our focus this week is get back to fundamentals and take care of the football.”

Holton will be stressing fundamentals to his young Bulldogs on the other side of the ball as well.

“We didn’t tackle very well last week,” said Holton. “We have really focused on tackling and fundamentals on defense.”

Highland (0-1) will open MOAC play at home vs River Valley (0-1), Clear Fork (1-0) will host St. Vincent St. Mary (1-0) and Northridge (0-1) hosts Hamilton Township (1-0).

Fredericktown (1-0) after coming off a hard-fought road win against rival Highland, heads to Crestline (1-0), and Loudonville (1-0) which showed well in Week 1, will play at Crestview (1-0).

Two other area teams will be battling over bragging rights in Licking County. The Johnstown Johnnies (0-1) will be looking for their first win against host Heath (1-0), and Utica (1-0) travels to area rival Granville.