By Joanna Chadwick
It’s Week 2 of high school football, and I am curious as to how this will play out.
Who will score the upset? Who’s better than we thought? Who’s not as good as we thought? What players will stand out?
Be sure to email me at [email protected] with your box scores and highlights tonight — I’ll pass them on to Blake Chadwick for his recap.
While I don’t do football rankings anymore because Matt Browning takes care of those for ksmain.ksvype.com, I usually felt pretty safe making early season picks. Fact is, the same teams were usually the best teams year in and year out.
It’s more difficult in football to get dramatically better because there’s so many players involved. For instance, let me bring you back to when Wichita East had Bryce Brown and Arthur Brown. They are two of the best athletes I’ve ever covered. Phenomenal players.
Yet East didn’t make the playoffs while the Brown brothers were there. Want to know why? Because in football you need a lot more than two players, even though they were both future NFL draftees.
Regardless of the stagnancy of high school football, there’s always those teams that either have an incredible senior class that gets over the hump or there’s those schools that had a lot of transfers.
Those teams with the senior classes that are strong, that are special — they can be one-hit wonders because the rest of the athletes on the team just aren’t at their level.
Those schools that are good year in and year out, they reload, not rebuild. They have strong athletes in most of their classes, so you don’t see much drop-off. Getting to that level is not easy.
Tonight’s schedule
Andover Central at Buhler (canceled today due to an Andover Central player’s positive Covid test)
Arkansas City at Andover
Beloit at SE-Saline
Cair Paravel at Wichita Homeschool
Canton-Galva at Moundridge
Central-Burden at Cedar Vale-Dexter
Chaparral at Hutchinson Trinity
Cheney at Belle Plaine
Cherryvale at Bluestem
Concordia at Abilene
Conway Springs at Remington
Deerfield at Cunningham
Derby at Newton
El Dorado at Augusta
Ell-Saline at Salina Sacred Heart
Ellinwood at Inman
Eureka at Erie
Fairfield at Lincoln
Flinthills at Sedan
Fowler at Burrton
Garden Plain at Sterling
Goddard at Valley Center
Goessel at Herington
Hartford at Madison
Haven at Smoky Valley
Hillsboro at Hesston
Hoisington at Larned
Hutchinson at Garden City
Kapaun at Bishop Carroll
Labette County at Winfield
Little River at Clifton-Clyde
Maize at Campus
Maize South at Salina South
Marion at Douglass
McPherson at Circle
Mulvane at Andale
Nickerson at Halstead
Norwich at South Barber
Pratt at Girard
Pratt Skyline at Medicine Lodge
Pretty Prairie at Valley Falls
Rose Hill at Clearwater
Salina Central at Eisenhower
South Haven at Caldwell
Trinity Academy at Kingman
Udall at Argonia-Attica
Wellington at Collegiate
West Elk at Oxford
Saturday’s games
Wichita South vs. Wichita Southeast at Heights, 1 p.m.
Wichita West at Wichita Northwest, 1 p.m.
Monday’s game
Wichita East vs. Wichita North
