HS FOOTBALL: Rankin, Garden City look to stay focused
Published 5:14 pm, Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The hardest part for the Garden City and Rankin football teams this week may not actually be playing their games, but focusing on them.
The Bearkats and Red Devils rolled to big victories in their Six-Man Division I, District 5 openers last Friday, and are both heavily favored to win this week.
A win by both would set up not only a showdown for the district title but also a game that will have the attention of the state when they play next week in Rankin.
This week, though, coaches at both schools are reminding their players that next week is not here yet, and to make next week special they still have to win this Friday.
“We have to win this one or next week doesn’t matter,” Rankin coach Kevin Ray said on Monday. “That’s really the truth of it all.”
Rankin (8-0, 1-0 in Six-Man Division I, District 5) will make the nearly two-and-half hour trip to Marfa, facing a Shorthorns team that has one win this season and lost its district opener to Garden City 48-0.
Ray said he and his staff have been talking to the team about focusing on Marfa, and not another team.
“I think they’ve focused on the game at hand this year, but the mistake that our kids have made in the past is underestimating teams and not taking them seriously enough,” Ray said. “They are not necessarily looking to the next game. I think they look at comparative scores and think we are going to kill this team and not being prepared for them.”
Garden City’s Odom said it can be “the hardest thing in the world” to keep a team focused on the current week with such a big game on the schedule in the future. But that doesn’t mean Odom and his staff haven’t worked in a few game-plan tactics in regards to Rankin during the bye week.
The Bearkats (7-1, 1-0) will also travel to the mountains, but take on Fort Davis on Friday, and Odom said the focus will be to win and keep getting better every week.
“When we started district last week we told them it was a new season for us,” Odom said. “We try to take it one game at a time. But we did talk about Rankin a little bit, but use this week of practice to get better and use this game to get better for what could be a district championship.”
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