By TYLER HENRY
Lead Sportswriter - Salina Post
Despite an 0-3 start to their season, the Sacred Heart football team will have an excellent opportunity to right the ship, as they welcome the Belle Plaine Dragons (1-2) to town on Friday night.
The Knights are coming off back-to-back league losses at the hands of 2A schools in Ellsworth and Minneapolis (combined 5-1), but have learned a number of great lessons from those battles to take with them into district play.
“Coaches at most levels would say that you want to face good competition,” Sacred Heart head coach Norm Jennings said. “I know the public judges by the record but we’re not concerned by that. Games like the ones we’ve had prepare us for games against teams like Smith Center down the road and I’d much rather have that than an easy blowout win.”
Now that the Knights have entered district play, they’ll finally have an opportunity to face teams of similar size, with similar roster numbers, which should give Sacred Heart the opportunity to flourish in the coming weeks.
“These games in front of us are very exciting and we know that we’re out of time,” Jennings said. “We’ve made our mistakes but now it’s crunch time and we’re excited to have a few games here against teams like us to see how we stack up.”
While the Knights cruised to a 30-0 victory over Belle Plaine a season ago, the Dragons will be hungry for a little revenge this week, as they look to snap a two-game skid of their own.
“This is a game that we feel they have circled and we know they’ll be ready,” he said. “They have a three-man front with a rover in the secondary and they flow to the ball really well. They don’t pack the box so we’ll have to make blocks in space. Offensively they’ve been able to remain versatile and they’ve changed a lot from last year.”
While the scoring has stagnated a bit over the last two weeks, this could very well be the matchup that shows off the Knight's new flexbone offense, as Sacred Heart looks to put the pieces together at the midway mark of their campaign.
“Offensively we need to put a lot of points on the board and that comes down to having all 11 guys blocking downfield and blocking in open space,” Jennings said. “We need these boys to believe that the flex is their future.”
Kickoff between the Knights and Dragons is scheduled for 7:00 in Salina and as always the game can be streamed for free with live video and audio commentary on the Salina Post.