Columbus North’s Sam Perry, left, prepares to tackle Columbus East’s Cam Herron Aug. 25, 2023, at Columbus East.
The Republic file photo
Columbus North couldn’t have asked for a better start to its football season. Columbus East knows it has a lot of work to do.
Friday night, the crosstown rivals will meet at North for the 54th edition of the rivalry game. The Bull Dogs have won three in a row and lead the series 28-25.
“I think it’s good timing for us because of the big win on Friday,” North coach Logan Haston said. “It allows us to turn the page and move on because we have such an important game with the rivalry next. That’s always been our approach, that the most important game on our schedule is the next one. It happens to be against a crosstown rival, so it doesn’t take a lot of rah-rah speeches this week to get our guys prepared to win. They know there’s a lot at stake with playing our rival. They’re ready for the challenge, and they’re excited for it.”
The Bull Dogs stunned Class 5A then-No. 1 Decatur Central 41-15 in Friday’s opener. North led 34-7 at halftime.
“It was one of those games where we we were firing on all cylinders,” Haston said. “We’ve talked to our guys a lot that if we can play a balanced attack where our offense, defense and special teams are all clicking at the same time, we can be pretty special. The first half of that game, we really saw that come to fruition. Yeah, we gave up the kick return, but we also blocked a punt, so we feel really good about that. Defense was kind of relentless with their pursuit, and offense was just executing our scheme at a really high level.”
“We knew we were going to have our hands full,” Haston said. “They have a lot of firepower on the offensive side of the ball. I think we had a really good game plan where we brought a lot of pressure and made them uncomfortable early in the game, sort of made them one-dimensional where they had to throw the football a lot, and we feel like that favors us. So I’m really proud of the way our defense executed the game plan.”
The Olympians, meanwhile, went toe-to-toe with 5A then-No. 10 Bloomington South for parts of their opener on Friday, but fell 27-6. East was unable to score on one drive after having it first-and-goal at the 2.
“We’re going to have to be able to run the football better,” Vogel said. “I thought we made some strides from the scrimmage to our game against Bloomington South. I thought there were a few times we ran the ball OK, but we need to be more consistent in running the football and being able to block up front. North creates a pretty good challenge because they kind of thrive on pressure and creating chaos up front, and they do a really good job with it.”
East also will have to find a way to slow down North senior running back Gino Prescott after giving up 203 yards on the ground to Bloomington South’s Braylen Townsend. Prescott ran for 115 yards in a 41-0 win against the Olympians last year and had 95 yards and three touchdowns on Friday at Decatur Central.
“Gino Prescott is a good runner, so we’re going to have to be pretty gap sound and make sure we tackle,” Vogel said. “I know from last year, Gino runs really hard. You have to really put a tackle on him. If you watch him on film, he breaks a lot of tackles. We’re going to have to be sure tacklers and try to pursue the football and get multiple guys try to gang-tackle him.”
Bull Dogs junior Asher Ratliff threw for three touchdowns on Friday, including two to senior Braylon Thoman. Thoman finished with five catches for 98 yards.
East junior Kyson Villarreal completed 16 of 27 passes for 155 yards and carried 11 times for 34 yards and a touchdown in their opener. Junior Keaton Lawson caught seven passes for 74 yards.
“There’s always a lot of areas for improvement, regardless of whether you win or lose,” Vogel said. “Our run defense was not very good, so we need to shore things up when it comes to defending the run. We weren’t real gap sound, so we need to be more gap sound against Columbus North.”
