Following Wednesday’s practice, the Emporia High football team huddled around coach Bill Lowe and sang a song to the tune of “Hey, Baby.”
Heeeeeey, Hey Spartans/We gotta know-oh-oh-oh/We’re gonna win this game.
No one in earshot of the Spartans would have ever known they are still searching for their first win.
Granted, Emporia High has only played one game — a season-opening 21-14 loss to Blue Valley West last Friday — but the fact that the Spartans are upbeat even though they own an 0-1 record is reassuring to Lowe, who penned the words to the team’s new motivational tune.
“We challenged our guys this week a little bit, and I think they stepped up to the challenge,” Lowe said. “I think they’ve responded well. We’ve talked about finding a way to finish and believing in themselves and playing hard in the fourth quarter, and I think they’ll be ready to go.
“We’re excited about getting on the field and getting a chance to redeem ourselves.”
After dropping last week’s contest to Blue Valley West thanks to a fourth-quarter turnover and several drive-stalling penalties, Emporia High’s first chance to prove it won’t be beaten by one loss comes Friday, as the Spartans travel north for a Centennial League matchup with Topeka High (0-1).
The Trojans are coming off a 41-21 loss at the hands of Junction City, but present a more-than-worthy foe for Emporia High.
Topeka High will offer a decidedly different look on offense than that of pass-happy Blue Valley West, as the Trojans rely heavily on their running game led by running back Dorian Branch, who rushed for 125 yards on 18 carries — including a 66-yard touchdown scamper — against Junction City.
“He’s a little jitterbug,” Lowe said of Branch. “He changes direction so quick. A play might be going one way, and he’ll end up all the way on the other side of the field. He’s tough to defend because you never know where he’s going to be.”
Branch and teammates A.J. Barber, Khalil Mitchell and John Babb comprised last year’s 6A state champion 4x100-meter relay team, and it is that type of team speed that jumps out at Lowe.
“They’re fast,” Lowe said. “They’re very fast, and they’re big up front too. They’ve got some big linemen. We just have to be tougher than they are and come at them.”
Thankfully for the Spartans, they looked fairly stout against the run against Blue Valley West, holding the Jaguars and running back Andrew Gachkar, a Missouri commit, to 70 total rushing yards on 20 attempts.
Senior linebacker Dillon Cox said he and his teammates took pride in the fact that they played good run defense a week ago. Cox said it would take another strong effort like the one against Blue Valley West if the Spartans hope to win Friday.
“Defensively last week, we stopped the run pretty well — we did a pretty nice job against that,” Cox said. “Hopefully, we’ll keep it up and do a good job of stopping the run once again. (Topeka High) can try to run it all they want, and hopefully our D-line will be ready, because our linebackers will be.”
Making sure the defensive line is up to the task falls on the shoulder of players like senior defensive tackle Troy Pierce, who described his play last week as OK, but says he knows it “has to be better” this week.
“We’re going to try to cram up the middle,” Pierce said. “Our D-line has to get some push and keep them in the backfield and get some tackles for loss and some sacks.”
Offensively, the Spartans hope to maintain the same level of efficiency they showed last week in controlling much of the game with a powerful running attack that ground out 230 rushing yards against Blue Valley West.
Of course, the greater focus has been eliminating mistakes. Emporia High’s lone turnover last week — a fumble by running back Edd Noonan that gave Blue Valley West the ball on the Spartan 33-yard line — led directly to the go-ahead touchdown that gave Blue Valley West the victory.
Sophomore quarterback Taylor Euler, who started his first game last week, said he believes the Spartans have what it takes to carry on their solid play on offense.
“We did really well on offense. The offensive line did a great job of blocking, and Edd ran hard,” Euler said. “The one mistake that we had cost us, but I think we’ll be fine. We had a lot of yards on the ground. We don’t really need to pass that much because we dominate on the ground.”
If anything, the Emporia High players are confident that after a week of chewing on their season-opening loss, they will be ready to play even harder come Friday night.
“That loss just gives us something to work on,” Pierce said. “We’re going to come out and smack them in the mouth. We just know we have to come out every game harder and harder.”
If the Spartans have their way against Topeka High, they’ll be singing all the way back home.