By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
After starting their season with a 32-16 victory over Minneapolis, the Southeast of Saline Trojans will turn their attention to the “Trojan War” when they host Beloit on Friday night.
Beloit will visit SES fresh off a 30-14 defeat at the hands of Republic County, their first loss to the Buffaloes since 1999.
“Young teams do two things,” Beloit head coach Brad Gober said. “They turn the ball over and they give up big plays, and that’s exactly what happened last week.”
Beloit coughed the ball up three times in the loss, surrendering two fumbles and an interception.
For Southeast, despite the win, there was a lot to do in practice this week as the Trojans prepared for their rival.
“It was a good win, but it wasn’t a clean win,” SES head coach Mitch Gebhardt said. “We have a lot of things that we need to clean up to play the way we want to.”
It seems that every time the Trojans meet for a football game, tensions run high, and scores run close. SES has won the last two meetings by one score or less (20-12 in 2019 and 14-13 in 2018), and while they have won four of the last five, Beloit had won the five before that.
“Over the years this has been a really good rivalry,” Gebhardt said. “When the Trojans play it’s gonna be a good football game”
Southeast's main focus on Friday will be finding a way to slow down Beloit’s sophomore running back Benson Berndt, who carried the ball 25 times for over 170 yards and a score in the loss to Republic County.
While slowing the run will be a point of emphasis, SES spent much of their week focusing on improving their own game.
“We really worked on ourselves this week,” Gebhardt said. “We really want to make sure we’re doing things correctly and hopefully that shows up Friday night.”
Kickoff is set for 7pm at Steve Fritz Field, and as always, games can be heard courtesy of Eagle Radio on 910 AM and 107.5 FM.