(You Name It Sports photo)
By Greg Halbleib
A Big Twelve Conference battle highlights the WJBC Friday Night High School Football Extravaganza for Week 7.
Normal Community (5-1, 4-1 Big Twelve) travels to Tommy Stewart Field in Champaign to face the Centennial Chargers (3-3, 3-2). NCHS coach Wes Temples has been preparing the Ironmen for a bigger opponent.
“They have really, really good size, and we’re not gifted with size sometimes,” Temples said. “It comes back to defensively, we can’t give up the big play, and our defense has been playing awfully well. Offensively, number one, we have to take care of the football, and number two, we have to put some drives together and keep our defense off the field.”
Central Catholic (5-1, 4-0 Corn Belt) visits Fairbury for a conference tilt against Prairie Central (2-4, 2-3). Saints coach Mike Moews said his squad will face a high-quality quarterback fo rthe host Hawks.
“Offensively, it all goes through the quarterback so we need to keep an eye on him,” said Moews. “Last week against Mahomet-Seymour, they had some opportunities but couldn’t capitalize. We have to be ready to play.”
Normal West (2-4, 2-3 Big Twelve) is coming off a big win at Bloomington as the Wildcats visit Peoria Stadium to face Manual (0-6). West coach Darren Hess said his team was able to stay away from mistakes in last week’s win.
“We didn’t have turnovers like we’ve had in the past, and we cut down on penalties even though we had some,” said Hess.
U-High (2-4, 2-2 Corn Belt) has new life thanks to last week’s 46-0 win at Olympia according to coach Trevor Von Bruenchenhein, whose Pioneers host Mahomet-Seymour (4-2, 4-0).
“That energy was like a new football team in the locker room after that game,” said Von Breuchenhein. “I think they brought a lot of great energy into practice this week, which is what they need going into Mahomet-Seymour.”
Bloomington (3-3, 2-3 Big Twelve) hosts Richwoods (1-5, 1-4) with an offense that has pleased coach Joe Walters.
“In the last two weeks, we’ve had 921 yards of offense, in two weeks against two really good teams,” said Walters. “Normal West is better than 2-4, Peoria High is 6-0 and they should be, so to have 921 yards against those two teams, I’m not really too upset.”
The Extravaganza will also includes updates from Deer Creek-Mackinaw (6-0, 3-0 Heart of Illinois Large) at LeRoy (4-2, 2-1 Heart of Illinois Small) plus all of the area scores. The Extravaganza starts at 6:10 on WJBC-AM 1230 and WJBC.com with updates every quarter hour and post-game coverage until 11:00. Scores can also be found on the Friday night Twitter feed (@WJBCHSFootball, #WJBCHSFB).
Redbird volleyball: Illinois State volleyball visits Evansville tonight in Missouri Valley Conference play. First serve is at 7 p.m. on WJBC.com. Click here to listen.
