Creek, Cambridge battle in opener again
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WINTERSVILLE -- Though things did not go quite as planned last season for Indian Creek, they did start off with a victory for the first time in four years.
They'll look to make it back-to-back opening night wins as they welcome Cambridge to Kettlewell Memorial Stadium on Friday night after defeating the Bobcats, 35-25, in last year's opener on the road.
It's the 10th-consecutive season that opens with the match up against Cambridge, who went 0-9 a season ago.
"Yeah it's become a tradition, there's no question about it," Connor said. "It's something we look forward to, we feel like we always match up well with each other and expect it to be a great game once again."
The series between the schools has seen a lot of shifts back-and-forth through the last decade, Creek's win last year snapping a three-game skid. The Redskins, who were 2-8 a year ago, won five meetings in a row from 2015-2019.
"It has been a back-and-forth series," Connor said. "They had won three in a row before last year and we had beaten them five years in a row before that so it has swung back and forth. It's been a close series and a lot of close games, and that's the kind of football game we expect again on Friday night.
"We've seen them twice, they played hard in both scrimmages and they're going to be ready to go."
The key for Creek, both Friday night and throughout the season, is to take the things they've spent the summer working on and make those gains show on the field.
"We're hoping to be able to do some of things we haven't been able to do the last couple of years that we really stressed," Connor said. "I feel like we have gotten better in those areas, hopefully we show it. We have given a lot of big plays defensively in the past couple years, we've worked on that and I think we've gotten better on it through our scrimmages. Offensively we need to be better at staying in front of the chains and in short yardage situations, which I think we have. We also need to be able to throw the ball when we want to throw it.
"We've worked on those things and gotten better on all of them. We've improved on the areas we identified that we needed to improve."
Starting things off at home certainly helps, too. The Redskins are also home in Week 2 and play three of their first four at Kettlewell, setting up what they hope is a strong start.
"Starting off at home, especially, when like we do this year, you start off with a couple of games at home, it goes a long way to getting your feet under you early in the season," Connor said. "You're in your own locker room, you've got the home crowd ... the little intangibles are on your side."