Step 2 is complete and capped off a home record of 11-1 at home for our senior class.  Wearing the red jerseys for these gentlemen has provided a ton of success and Friday night was no different.  Eden Prairie has been the cream of the crop for 6A football for a long time and have had a lot of success.   Therefore when the bracket was revealed we realized that they were clearly going to make for the toughest of the matchups that we could have been provided as a 4 seed.   If they were in a different section, they were probably a top 2 team and therefore meeting them in the section finals provided a great test.  I love that our guys embraced the challenge and were focused each and every day in the process.   Our guys have truly realized that Friday nights can be won by your preparation during the week.

We knew that Eden Prairie was going to be a physical team that wanted to run directly at us.  So, we challenged the guys to make some early stops and give our offense the best opportunity to score early and often.  Offensively, we were able to get the ball first and moved down the field and got the early score that I thought could be key to the game.  Then defensively we were able to get a decent stop.   The only problem was the offense was going to need to drive 90+ yards.  This long field didn’t faze our offense as they were able to move down the field.  It was capped off by an amazing run by Charles Langama.  Chuck was and has been working is tail off to get back to playing and this run showed the dynamic ability that Chuck can be when he is on the field.  We were able to play really well in the first half and left the first half up 21-0 and absolutely dominated both sides of the ball.  We had over 250 yards in the first half and had given up less than 70. 

At halftime, we spoke about Eden Prairie not going down without a punch and that we were still in for 24 minutes of a battle.  Our defense was giving up some field position when Beaux Thyen jumped an arrow route and proceeded to take it back for a pick 6.   I felt like that play was technically the nail in the coffin even though we were only about 4 minutes into the third quarter.  The defense had to go back on the field again then and proceeded to battle with the hard nosed EP players until they decided to throw again.   This time Gavin Elmquist went up and high pointed a ball for another interception.

Offensively we didn’t get a lot of time on the field in the second half and therefore lost a little bit of our momentum from the first half, but they were able to do exactly what a coach wants and move the chains.   We were able to put up one more score to put a stamp on the game.  

While the game got a little sloppy towards the end which made us have a little reflection time after the game and during film on Saturday morning, it doesn’t take away from how proud I am of the guys ability to make plays.  This was a great step and got us a little closer to our end goal.  It was truly a LEAVE NO DOUBT game.

This upcoming week will provide an even tougher test in Edina.  They have a very capable offense and some players that have a ton of experience in these situations as well.   I am excited to watch our week and I hope that we can fill Park Center’s stadium to look like ours.  It would be great to have a “home field advantage” with PC only being about a 15 minute drive.  Let’s go get step 3 and continue our journey.

Coach Spurrell