The Aplington-Parkersburg football team is working toward a strong finish to non-district play when it travels to #7 (1A) South Hardin for its Week 3 game.
“We know we’ve got to tackle better, so we’ve spent a lot of time this week really working on tackling as we’re going to face a big strong back this week and an elusive quarterback out of South Hardin,” Interim coach Aaron Thomas says. “So we know we’ve got to tackle better, and then just our offensive execution, we’ve really, really broken it down this week just on our blocking schemes and to make sure guys know exactly where they’re going, where the backs see the holes, and we’re hoping that’ll make a difference. Still spending some time with our passing game to try to improve that area. We know we’ve got to tackle better, block better, and kind of just the basics of football.”
At 0-2, the Falcons have had difficulties with building momentum in losses to Union and #2 (1A) Grundy Center. They’ve managed just 265 yards of total offense in the first two games, and have been held to just seven points. While running a combination of the traditional Wing-T offense and some spread formations, Thomas is looking to solidify offensive concepts based on the opponent.
“It’s been trying to become even a little more specific in practice and what we think we can run this week, and then try to get really good at it. Instead of trying to run a bunch of things, we’ve tried to really narrow our scope, and we’re really trying to get good at a couple things that we think scheme-wise will be good for us. And then hopefully that will carry over. And for us, I appreciate that the guys have come out, they’ve worked hard, they’ve been attentive, they haven’t thrown in the towel, and that’s huge. We’re only two weeks into this thing, we haven’t even started district play. So from those standpoints, I appreciate the effort of our guys, and we know it’s going to be a big task.”
Defensively, they’ll look to return to a similar form as Week 1, where they played sound fundamentally and gave up only 122 yards.
Friday’s game will air on 99 The Wave. South Hardin enters 2-0.
Aaron Thomas interview:
