Benton travels to the Northside to face rival Lafayette
By Calvin Silvers
In one of the most anticipated matchups of the season here in St. Joseph, the Benton Cardinals and Lafayette Fighting Irish will renew the fierce rivalry under the Friday night lights. The classic Northside versus Southside showdown has been dominated by Lafayette for the past five seasons, but Benton is hungry to turn the tide and reclaim city bragging rights.
“It’s always a big deal,” Benton running back Jaxson Rich said. “I think it’s a big deal to them, big deal to us, and I’m sure there is a little bit of trash talk, but we’re just trying to look forward and focus and get right.”
The Cardinals are preparing to face a second in-city rival in two weeks, as the Cardinals hosted the Central Indians last Friday. Despite a Class 3 versus Class 5 matchup, Benton scored 14 points in the second half, and even had an opportunity for the big upset, but ultimately fell 21-14.
This was a major improvement from last season’s contest, where Benton lost 54-6 to Central.
“There’s some confidence there, especially considering the outcome of last year compared to Friday, and we play another one this week,” head coach Corey Bertini said. “That’s just another opportunity of like, ‘hey, we can’t really sit on our laurels here.’”
The attention now shifts to Lafayette, who has taken four of the last five meetings in this storied rivalry. The Cardinals’ last victory came in 2022, where they tallied a commanding 44-13 win on the road.
If history has a way of repeating itself, Benton will be looking to channel that same road magic as they travel to Lafayette on Friday, but the team knows the size of the Irish will be a hurdle.
“They’ve got some big guys and some physical guys,” Bertini said. “Skill-wise, they’re going to have some studs. I want to play the best teams, whether that be here locally or in the state of Missouri, because I want our guys to match their level of competition and i think they will.”
Besides being rivals, this contest holds a lot of weight on how the remainder of the season could go. For Benton, they dropped this contest same time last year and would go on to lose six of their last seven games.
However, it’s a new season with new attitudes, and the Cardinals don’t want a repeat of last season.
“They’ve seen that, they felt that, they’ve witnessed that experience of you lose one that might turn into two and three and so on and so forth,” Bertini said. “I think they’ve taken it upon themselves. It starts with eliminating that downhill slide of, you know, ‘hey, we struggled last week,’ well, then you let it carry over into the next week and so on and so forth.”
With the seniors of Benton not having as much success on the gridiron as they would’ve liked against the Northside, this is one more opportunity to leave the field on a high note.
“Just come out this year and give everything I got for my last year and try to finish strong, and I think a win here would help us solidify a good season and good start to something great.”
