Hat High Hawks quarterback Brody Fink avoids the pursing Vikings in Hat High's 42-7 win over Crescent Heights for the Rangeland Football Conference Championship last Friday. -- NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Hat High Hawks football coach Quinn Skelton isn’t sugar coating it, Friday’s zone championship matchup against the Cardston Cougars is the Hawks most important of the season.
“It’s the biggest game of the year for us,” Skelton said. “The zone championship is always that one step better to show how we are doing against teams in the South. The zone championship has always been important to me.”
Skelton, who has been coaching for 32 years, says the zone championship game has always been a dogfight as well. The Hawks did shut out Cardston 18-0 early in the season in a retribution win after the Cougars blew out Hat High in the zone championship two years ago. Skelton says it will be a challenge to make sure the team doesn’t lose sight of the game Friday with provincials on the horizon.
“I think that is tough because trying not to look past the zones to go into provincials is a challenge,” Skelton said. “But we keep reminding the guys all week that we have a tough game ahead of us and Cardston isn’t going to come down here and give it to us. Remind them they have to earn that zone championship and put ourselves into the provincial bracket.”
The Hawks won their last two playoff games against the McCoy Colts and Crescent Heights Vikings by a combined score of 81-21 en route to the Rangeland Football Conference title. Skelton says those matchups, especially against the Vikings, prepared them for what will likely be a close match against Cardston.
“The physicality in the game against Crescent Heights definitely helps us keep the edge on,” he said. “Our guys are a pretty mature group that know that it’s important to focus on each game, each week and we’ve preached that right since August.”
The Hawks’ core, like most high school football teams, is made up of a lot of seniors who have played together since before they started high school.
“They deserve it, they’ve been a tight knit group right since Grade 7/8,” Skelton said. “These kids, they’ve been through a lot they won provincials in Grade 9 when they were in bantam and I know anything short of winning provincials will be disappointing for the whole crew.”
Senior Kai Noon says the Hawks are like a brotherhood and it’s been fun to come out and play ball with them all season. He says he and the team are looking forward to the matchup.
“It’s something we’ve been working hard for,” Noon said.” “Cardston is a good team, we’re a good team. We’ve both gotten better since we last played so we know that if we lost this game it could be our last, so intensity every practice and really taking this game seriously and putting up a good fight, we’re looking forward to it.”
Noon says the biggest thing he’s learned from the season heading into the matchup with the Cougars has been what the Hawks identity is as a team.
“One thing that stays constant every game we play is that our identity is physical football,” Noon said. “Every game we make sure we come out of the start and just play really physical, hit hard and play hard to give all of our effort and we have to do that again this Friday.”
Skelton says the motivation is there even more for his team as these games start to come with ‘win or go home’ effects.
When asked how he will ensure the team and coaching staff stick to their game against Cardston, Skelton says they’ve focused on the basics all year long and the coaches have drilled the fundamentals into the guys all season.
“We preach a lot about the basics, right from spring camp on,” Skelton said. “Fundamentally we have a fantastic group of coaches that work on fundamentals with our kids each and every day. This week, last week, getting ready for championship-type games and they’re both banner games… we still work on the fundamentals.”
The zone championship against Cardston gets underway Friday at the Methanex Bowl at 6 p.m.
