By Bryan Bloodworth
BLOOMINGTON – It’s Chili Bowl time in the third week of the High School Football Extravaganza tonight.
Normal Community travels to cross-town rival and Big 12 Conference foe Normal West in a battle of Unit 5 schools in the featured game on WJBC 1230 AM beginning at 6 p.m.
In other games where WJBC will have periodic live reports, Bloomington is at LaSalle to take on LaSalle-Peru while Central Catholic and University High are involved in Corn Belt Conference games. Central Catholic entertains Eureka while U-High travels to Chillicothe to meet IVC and Olympia (1-1) plays at Mahomet-Seymour (1-1).
NCHS, unbeaten in their first two games, will be looking for its 18th straight win over Big 12 opponents while West has a 1-1 record.
“It’s just another great opportunity for us,” said West coach Darren Hess. “Coach (Wes) Temples and the Ironmen have always had a great tradition. They have an excellent football team. They probably have the best offensive and defensive lines that we’ll see all year. With (Alec) Bozarth and all the rest of the skill they have tons of talent.
“We’re going to have to play some of our best football to have an opportunity to win the game. But it’s a great challenge and I’d rather it be like this where we’re playing a lot of great teams. These kids grew up together, played a lot of football with each other and against. I just think it’s a great rivalry.”
Temples agrees.
“It’s an exciting week for our kids, for our schools and the community,” he said. “As we always talk about, the records are out the window. It’s going to be a battle. It’s going to be a very, very physical game. It’s a very fun game and something both schools are looking forward to.”
BHS coach Rigo Schmelzer said the Purple Raiders need to get to a more aggressive attitude against LaSalle-Peru (1-1) if they are to secure their first win of the season.
“We need to go back to a more aggressive state like we were in Week 1,” said Schmelzer. “We need to control what we can control ourselves and not worry about opponents. The lesson we learned (last week in a loss to Pekin) is that football is an emotional game and you can’t let any game feel like it’s a victory until it’s all over with.”
Central Catholic (1-1) hopes to move above the .500 mark when it plays host to Eureka, which has a 1-1 record.
“We need to continue to improve where we’re at on assignments running the ball,” said Central coach Mike Moews. “We like to run the ball more than we throw it. We’d like to be a 60-40 split. Up front we’re getting better and learning. We need to continue to get the ball to our threats (Ryan Zitkus and Brian Segobiano).”
U-High will be trying to rebound from a loss to Central Catholic last week when it makes the trip to Chillicothe, which hasn’t won in two games.
“We need to know our assignments up front offensively and then once we have that done we’ll be OK,” said Pioneers’ coach Mike Troll. “They’re big up front and defensively they run something you don’t see a lot in our conference a 3-5-3. Offensively, they have really strong running backs.”
Bryan Bloodworth can be reached at [email protected]
