Central Indians will face rival Benton Cardinals in Game of the Week

By Calvin Silvers

The Central Indians are coming off a 45-19 victory over Winnetonka in Week 1, capturing not only the first win of the season but Sheldon Farrell’s first victory as a head coach. Now the attention is turned to in-city rival, the Benton Cardinals.

While Benton has struggled in recent years, they aren’t a team you want to overlook.

“They have playmakers and they are physical, and if you combine those two things in the game of football, you can be pretty solid,” Farrell said.

This will be a Class 3 versus Class 5 battle, with Central being the larger school.

While this may cause some variation in talent across the board, these athletes have grown up in the same city, wanting to compete and be the best, meaning some friendships will be put to the side on Friday night.

“It’s fun, the competitiveness is definitely there. I mean, it’s winner-take-all out here,” running back Gabe Fields said. “I mean, I’m just looking forward to showing everybody we’re the best in the city. I mean, we love playing everybody in the city, but we’re out here to make a statement.”

The Indians bring a lot of speed to the field this season, something the team wants to utilize not only this week, but weeks to come. The most dangerous aspect of this is where the speed could come from. You can find it in the backfield, the receiving core, or defensively, making this team hard to scout.

“I think it makes us very diverse, I think we have people that can get up and go and also people that are just slick in their routes,” wide receiver Amonttay Henderson said. “We got a lot of depth in our offense, we’ve got a lot of key pieces, and I think as long as we can get the ball in their hands and let them do what they do, then we’re going to be all right.”

Despite Central being two classes higher, the Indians know that on any given Friday, you can be sent home with a loss. Because of this, Farrell has been implementing all week not to let your guard down, and respect every opponent placed in front of you.

“They scored three times us in the jamboree and people think this is an even matchup,” Farrell said. “We need to act like, you know, kind of fuel that fire of not just being like, ‘hey, we’re going walk in there and take it.”

While the focus is on the players on the field, the sidelines will also feature a cool story, as Farrell is in his first year and Benton’s head coach Corey Bertini is in his second year, providing a youth movement in the community.

“I think we both have really good respect for each other and we both know we’re going to get the best of both teams,” Farrell said. “You know, there is a youth movement in the coaching in St. Joe and that’s pretty cool to see because this last week we were really successful.”