GLOVERSVILLE – There will be no Friday night lights for the Gloversville Huskies this week.
Instead, the Huskies travel to Valatie tonight to take on Ichabod Crane High School in a non-conference football game.
Having less than a full week to prepare for the game presented another challenge for the Huskies’ coaching staff.
“It is always a challenge,” Gloversville coach Jared Bongo said. “We usually have three days of practice then a walk through. We had two days and then today we had thunderstorms and the heat index was real high. We were in the gym instead of outside. It was a tough transition for us to do exactly what we wanted to do.”
The Huskies (1-0) opened their season Friday with a 40-0 victory on the road against Mohonasen.
Senior quarterback Asa Barnhill rushed for 103 yards on 8 carries, scoring on touchdown runs of 9, 29, 1 and 38 yards. He also threw for 64 yards in a 4-for-8 performance and was intercepted once.
The Gloversville ground game also got a boost from Quantel McGee who carried the ball six times for 70 yards.
“I would love to have that same production every week,” Bongo said. “The one thing we really have to work on is that we keep shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties. We need to make sure we cut down on the penalties. When we get up against the tougher teams like Burnt Hills, Amsterdam or Queensbury, we are going to have to make sure we are on our ‘A’ game. False starts and personal fouls really hurt us. We have to be ready to play Huskies football.”
While Barnhill, McGee, David Vandenabeele and Taylor McCreadie turned in strong performances, Bongo said he was impressed by the play of junior lineman Austin Luci. “Luci started on both offensive and defensive lines for us. He really stepped up and played a nice game for us,” he said.
Ichabod Crane (0-1) is coming off a 41-0 loss the Hudson last Friday but Bongo not taking the Class B Riders lightly.
“I look at it that they have nothing to lose,” he said. “They just started their varsity program up a couple of years ago. They are not a powerhouse team but I expect them to throw everything in the book at us. It is tough to play a team like that because you never know what to expect. So our guys have to come ready to play on every down.”
Tonight’s matchup is the second-straight non-conference game for the Huskies who open Class A Northwest conference play next Friday at home against defending state champion Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake.
“We have some things we still need to iron out,” Bongo said. “We are going to go down there, play our game and go from there but we need to get through this game first instead of looking ahead to Burnt Hills.”
Game change
AMSTERDAM – The starting time for Friday’s game between the host Amsterdam Rams (1-0) and Mohonasen (0-1) has been changed.
The non-conference contest was originally scheduled to start at 7 pm. but has been switched to a 4:30 p.m. start at the Lynch Literacy Academy field.
