By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
After eliminating Haven in week nine, the Southeast of Saline Trojans will turn their attention to a round-of-16 matchup with the 7-1 Chaparral Roadrunners.
The Roadrunners enter this contest with a statistically impressive resume at first glance, fresh off a 35-14 elimination victory over Halstead last Friday.
While Chaparral was busy dueling the Dragons, the Gypsum faithful were being treated to another installment of the Nathan Friesen show, as the junior carried the ball ten times for 149 yards and four touchdowns in Southeast’s win over the Wildcats.
“I thought we started well in that game,” SES head coach Mitch Gebhardt said. “We put together a nice drive with a fourth-down conversion and scored early. Our guys up front established our run game and Nathan had a great day. We always knew he was fast but his vision has improved so much.”
While expectations for this top-ranked Trojan team remain high, inside the SES locker room, Southeast remains committed to the same 1-0 approach that got them here, looking to take things one game at a time.
“Our guys are playing confident and I think that shows when we don’t hesitate to go for it on fourth down and they go out and execute a play like what we did,” Gerhardt said. “Confidence is huge and week nine is the first week of the real playoffs so to win there is a big step for us. Now we want to continue to take those steps.”
To take another step and advance to the quarterfinals for a second straight season, the Trojans will need to go through a Chaparral team that has lost just one game all year, a 35-7 affair at the hands of #3 Kingman.
Upon further examination of the Chaparral schedule, the strength of this Roadrunner resume can be called into question, as this 7-1 squad has failed to record a single win over a 2A or bigger opponent with a .500 or better record in 2022.
Chaparral lives and dies by converted signal caller Austin Clark. The former running back has thrown for over 1,300 yards and 14 touchdowns, adding a team-leading 107 carries, 783 rushing yards, and eight rushing touchdowns to shoulder 79% of the Roadrunner's total offense.
For good measure, Clark also leads the team with 62 total tackles on defense, adding a sack and a fumble recovery to an already bloated stat sheet.
“He’s a long, rangy kid and he does a good job of getting to the ball on defense,” Gebhardt said. “Offensively we need to make sure we keep track of him and force him to do some things that he doesn’t want to do.”
Defensively, Chaparral’s strength can be found in their front, where guys like Ely Jackson and Eli Bates have combined for seven of the Roadrunner's ten sacks this season.
If the Trojan line can hold once more as it has for the last nine weeks, the SES offense will look to tire that unit out and keep the Chaparral secondary guessing.
“We’ve been known to go pretty fast and we want to continue to do that and to spread it out to wear those guys down,” he said. “It’s also important this time of year to have a good run game because you never know what the weather is going to be like and we want to keep our run game at a high pace.”
Due to inclement weather and projected field conditions, this game has been moved to the campus of Kansas Wesleyan, but as it often is for Coyotes games, a sea of purple is expected in Salina on Friday night.
“Our crowd, our fans, and our community are awesome,” Gebhardt said. “There are a lot of times when we travel a long way on the road and bring just as many people if not more than the home team. Southeast of Saline people love football and we know we’re going to have good support in Salina.”
Kickoff between the Trojans and Roadrunners is set for 7 pm at the Graves Family Sports Complex in Salina with the winner moving on to the quarterfinals to face either 7-2 Hoisington or 6-3 Russell.
As always the game can be heard on KINA (910 AM or 107.5 FM) or streamed live with both video and audio on the Salina Post.