Anthony Padovano of North Union throws the ball while Dylan Stage of Fairbanks prepares to tackle him. The Wildcats will head to Colonel Crawford for Week 2 of Friday night football.
(Submitted photo)
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With a victory under their belts during the first week of the 2018 high school football season, the North Union Wildcats look to add to their momentum.
NU rolled to a 46-3 triumph at home over Fairbanks and now will head north to face Colonel Crawford.
The win didn’t come as a surprise to North Union head coach Nick Hajjar. However, the spread was a bit shocking.
“I didn’t think the game was going to end up that way,” he said. “We knew they had really good players. We knew their quarterback was probably not going to play, but still without him they have a lot of really good athletes.”
Even with all of the talent on the field, the Wildcats where able to play lights-out defense, forcing turnover after turnover to keep the score one sided.
“I think the turnovers really helped get momentum in our favor,” Hajjar said.
The Wildcats must now use the momentum from Week 1 to take them into Week 2 against an opponent Hajjar said, “is going to be a real challenge for us.”
Colonel Crawford has a robust 63-man roster which will bring a lot of the same things that Wildcats do to the field.
“They are similar to us,” said Hajjar. “Offensively, they are a Wing T team that also does some spread stuff. They will be every bit as big as us, if not bigger.
“They are a big physical football team,” he said. “It is going to be a slugfest and we’ve got to get ready to go.”
The Eagles will be led by senior quarterback Zye Shipmen “who is every bit of 6-4,” according to Hajjar.
Shipmen will have Owin Seevers, a returning all-conference player, the Wildcats will have to contend with in the backfield.
“I know they have a couple of all-conference kids who are coming back on each side of the football,” Hajjar said. “They use a bunch of different backs in the backfield, similar to us.”
Other than watching some film, the Wildcats don’t know a whole lot about their upcoming opponent.
“We saw some of these kids this year at some power lifting meets, so we know they are strong,” said Hajjar. “They scrimmaged with Grandview Heights and that is a common opponent that we can at least know how they are (on the field).”
But even with the limited information, Hajjar believes it doesn’t matter, because “we can’t control what Colonel Crawford does.
“All we can control is ourselves and it is a battle of us against ourselves,” he said. “We got work to do and there are still a lot of things that we’ve got to clean up for us to continue to improve.”
Part of these keys to getting better is Hajjar’s dedication to be more balanced this season.
Last week, the Wildcats threw the ball 14 times, connecting on eight of those passes. One of them went for a 24-yard touchdown to Preston Crabtree.
“We’ve got a number of different guys, a stable of running backs, who can run and have different running styles,” said Hajjar. “It starts up front and I thought those guys played well. I think we threw the ball 14 times and we’re really making a commitment to throw the ball more.”
On the defensive side of the ball, the Wildcats are experimenting with their linemen to see what set ups they can use.
“I thought it was key for us to handle their (Fairbanks) run game with only three down linemen,” Hajjar said. “It was one of those things that we wanted to wait and see if we could or not.
“We were able to do that, which allowed us to have more guys in coverage than they typically get the ball to.”
With game one in the books, the Wildcats will now face their first real test of the season as they square off against a team that is bringing the same game plan to field.