(Avoca) Coming up on KSOM Friday night AHSTW will travel to Oakland for a first round playoff matchup against the Riverside Bulldogs.
To say the AHSTW football team is eager to return would be an understatement. The Vikings haven’t taken the field since beating Sidney 48-22 on September 18th. Coach GG Harris says, “I don’t even know if excited is the word anymore. We are beyond anxious. Each week we’ve become more and more grateful for the opportunity. We’ve got a hungry bunch of boys, a hungry staff, and hungry community ready to watch some football.”
Harris weighs in on the pluses and minuses of their extended time off. “You can practice all you want, but you aren’t getting those game reps and that live speed. On the other hand no one has seen us on film since Sidney so who knows what we’ve installed. We’ve really only had one week off when we were virtual. We had a full week preparing for St. Albert when we canceled due to Covid on a Thursday. We had the week off which was Riverside. Then the following week we had a full week prepping for Tri-Center when that one got pulled under the rug from us on a Friday morning.”
These two teams are similar. In fact, Riverside coach Darrell Frain was on the Creston/O-M staff when coach Harris played in high school. AHSTW topped Riverside in a tight one last year, 17-14. Coach Harris knows the Bulldogs are much improved. “They do the little things really well on both sides of the ball. They don’t make a lot of mistakes. Most of the time they do a really good job of staying with a series on both sides of the ball and wait for you to make a mistake and they are able to capitalize.”
This is rivalry that goes way, way back and coach Harris has a tie in to both sides as his grandfather Dick Harris was a longtime coach at Riverside.
