November 10, 2009

3A
What To Watch In the East
Silver Lake has won the Eastern half of the Class 3A bracket seven seasons running. Seven!

In possibly the state's most-intriguing quarterfinal match-up on Friday, Silver Lake (11-0), which seems to have not lost a regular season game since we landed on the moon, hosts Marysville (10-1), which has one loss to Abilene, which lost only two games this season before bowing out of 4A to Rose Hill last Saturday.

Marysville has always been good at football. Buhler coach Steve Warner put together a very strong record there throughout the 90s and early 2000s, competing in 4A. But Silver Lake is just it in the 3A East.

This will be a battle, and for most of the season, I have been on the Marysville bandwagon. I'm staying. I just feel a change is needed. They've pounded everyone outside of the touchdown loss to Abilene. On Saturday they won 42-6 over previously undefeated Pleasant Ridge, which had won its first-round game 76-0 over a 6-3 Council Grove team.

I had Marysville winning the state title early in the season, and now that Conway Springs...

How the West Will Be Won
Shocking to me the Emporia win over McPherson was not. The Trinity Catholic win over Conway Springs, however, was.

Hutch Trinity actually controlled this thing early. Conway got within a score before halftime, then led late, until Trinity converted a 4th down and 30, or something unattainable like that, and won the ball game on that play.

Now come the tough, tough state quarterfinals. This is when playoff football gets rough and tumble. This is when teams either show up or get beaten badly.

It doesn't get any tougher than traveling to Norton, which is northwest of Hays, just south of the Nebraska border. Ask Smith Center, which has escaped from Norton with its winning streak intact the past several years.

Norton is where Trinity travels for the state quarterfinals.

As difficult as that trip will be for Trinity, Collegiate receives its third straight home playoff game on the other side of the Western half of the 3A bracket. Granted, they host Scott City, which since mid-season I have had a hunch could win the state title. It's a good thing Collegiate hosts, because I would not wish that trip to Scott City on anyone.

Scott City beat Norton 14-6 in district play, a knock-down, drag-out battle. They are physical football teams, while Trinity and Collegiate both are passing teams with plenty of basketball talent on the football field, scoring points in bunches.

Class 3A sub-state is fascinating. Will two stalwart, tradition-rich western Kansas, small-town football teams win this Friday, or will two private schools who battled it out in the state basketball semifinals last winter earn the right to meet in the football semifinals?

Nice note: Trinity and Collegiate were both 24-0 when they met in the state basketball semis last year. They would both be 12-0 if they were to meet next Friday in the state football semis. Weird.

It must kind of feel like the 1980s in western Kansas, except the towns are smaller. Norton won Class 4A state titles in 1985 and 1986, also making a state title game appearance in 1983. Scott City then won Class 4A titles in 1988, 1990 and 1991. The year they didn't make state in 1989, Norton made the state final game that year.

During this time period in which small towns in Kansas are shrinking and suffering in this economy more than ever, I'm sort of rooting for Scott City and Norton. Thinking about these teams, I can just sense the mystique. They make me curious about a time I only knew as a young, young child. Nostalgia is the best experience there is, and never is it stronger than when thinking about childhood.