Following big wins from last week, the MCKINLEY / GLENOAK game should be a great contest. Both teams have real athletic gamebreakers. I like many of you will be at that game.
Also nice to see tems like MASSILLON and NORTHWEST moving on. While neither team gets much publicity, they each showed they belong. I wish them both well.
Lastly, I was not even a little bit surprised to see HOOVER lose. As I have written before, they made a mistake all year on relying on Erick Howard all year. I saw a headline where it said, before the playoffs that Coach Hertler said "Howard's teammates need to step up." Yet I never saw any instances during the regular season where players were given the opportunity to do this. Hoover ran Howard in close games and blowouts alike. The team was not prepared nor the coaching staff able to adjust to a team that shut down Howard. He had 38 carries for 99 yards. Seems to me that regular season opportunities to build a better TEAM were wasted on way too much Erick Howard all year. Thirty eight carries is absurdly high when other options should have been available. Nonetheless, give Hoover credit for another strong year and Erick Howard respect for being the great player that he is. Good luck to him.
