The Winona Christian football team will find out quickly how much progress they have made since last season under coach Ken Chandler.
The Stars will open the regular season this week as they host rival Carroll Academy, a team that beat them 50-0 last year.
Chandler said the game has grown into a good rivalry game since he left Winona Christian.
“It has grown into a good rivalry game,” Chandler said. “My first two years here, it wasn’t much of a rivalry game. It was pretty lopsided in our favor. Last year was pretty lopsided in their favor. It might be that way this year, but I think we are a little better than last year.”
The Rebels might hold a slight advantage in football conditioning after playing in a jamboree last week while Winona Christian didn’t.
“We didn’t do anything scrimmage wise last week,” Chandler said. “We just practiced. It wasn’t too bad. We felt like we got a good week in and got in a lot of fundamental work. We haven ’t worked on Carroll at all. We still start to work on them this week. We really don’t know anything besides what I saw last year. We didn’t have any film to swap, so we don’t really know much about what they are going to do.”
Chandler said more than scouting reports, he wants his team to play with confidence.
“I think our biggest thing is our kids have to look across the field and say they can play with the team on the other sidelines,” Chandler said. “They have to have confidence that they can hold their own. We played Wayne in the scrimmage, and they were pretty good and I thought we held our own with them. We weren’t intimidated by them, and that’s a good thing. We have to stand up and fight. We have to take their licks and fight back.”
Chandler said depth could become an issue on Friday night.
“I think our ones are pretty good layers but it’s hard to go into battle with the numbers we’ve got,” Chandler said. “I don’t care how hard you practice, how much you run them, there will be a time where you wear down. One plus for us is we don’t have a junior high game this week so we will have those kids for four quarters and that will help us with depth.”
