Mohawks use week to prepare for biggest test of the regular season

By Mo Cranker on October 4, 2017.

mcranker@medicinehatnews.com @MHNmocranker

The Medicine Hat High School Mohawks are preparing for what is likely to be the biggest game of their regular season.

Hat High will take on the undefeated Crescent Heights High School Vikings, 7 p.m. Friday at the Methanex Bowl, for a clash between Medicine Hat’s two strongest high school football teams this season.

“It’s going to be a tough game, that’s for sure,” said Mohawks head coach Quinn Skelton before his team’s Tuesday afternoon practice. “We all know this is a really big game — that’s not a secret for anyone. We’ve had it marked on the calendar for a long time now, and we set this up as a homecoming game about a year ago for our new school. That definitely creates a little bit of pressure on the boys, but we’re hoping we can come out of the game with a win.”

Coming off a 14-0 win over the Brooks Buffalos last Friday, Skelton says this is going to be the biggest game of the year for his team.

“Crescent Heights hasn’t lost a game yet, and there’s a reason for that,” he said. “The Vikings have had a great year. They’ve got some really good athletes over there, and have some really good coaching behind them. We expect nothing less than a really tough game from them and we’re going to need to be up to the task.”

Quarterback Brody Brandham says he knows the team needs to be on top of its game if they want to take victory Friday.

“It’s going to be a difficult game,” he said. “We haven’t faced them yet this year, but when they played Brooks they played really well. We’ve watched a lot of tape on them and know that they’re a really good team. We’re going to stick to our game and hopefully pull out the win.”

Though Brandham says he is happy with the team’s win over Brooks, he knows there is a lot to be improved upon.

“The win was good but we need to play better than we did,” he said. “We got to the red zone a few times but we couldn’t finish our drives off until later in the game. I think we’re going to focus on that a lot this week before the game Friday, finishing our drives and not coming up short at the endzone.”

Skelton says he was proud of the shutout over the Buffalos, and wants to see more fight from the team.

“I hope we can take away the physicality we had, and the emotion we played with against Brooks,” he said. “I like to think the boys have made that switch, to bring those two things to the game. If we can’t bring it — it’s going to be a tough time, because we know they play with a lot of emotion.”

Both Brandham and Skelton agreed that it would be key to shut down the Vikings running game Friday.

“They like to run the ball, and they run it a lot,” said Skelton. “They run hard between tackles, and give the ball to (Creed) Willette a lot. We’re fully aware of that. They’re a team that’s going to make you pay if you’re not ready for them, and not ready to stop that style of play. They have a big, strong line, but I’m confident that we’ll be ready come Friday.”

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