Jimtown ready to bounce back after Week Two loss to Concord
ELKHART COUNTY, Mich. -- The Jimmies are heading north of the border and into Michigan to play Edwardsburg.
You can quite literally count on one hand the number of times these two programs have gone head-to-head, as this will be their fifth time squaring off.
It's been 59 years since these two teams faced off in a very low score of 6 nothing victory for Jimtown. Things will likely look a little different Friday night at Leo Hoffman Field, but the history, or somewhat lack thereof between the two programs isn't lost on third-year Jimtown head coach Cody Vincent, especially since he's a Jimmy alumnus himself.
"It seems like we owe them one, I think they got the better of us in the 50s a couple more times than we did of them so it's cool to go across state lines, and you hear people talk about Indiana high school football vs Michigan high school football, Edwardsburg is a great program, and they've been on a run for several years now so it's going to be a great challenge for us," says Vincent.
But enough with the history lessons, we've got a football game to talk about. The Jimmies come into Friday's matchup 1 and 1, after a week one victory over Wawasee, and a week two loss to Concord.
Vincent tells ACB57 he feels his team is ready for the challenge of taking on Edwardsburg's extreme ground and pound offense.
"They know who they are and they don't really bend or break from it, their offense is very impressive, and the physicality is something that is, and the style of offense is tough to match in practice. Luckily, we're pretty familiar with it because we run some of the same stuff here, but trying to duplicate that in practice is really difficult," says Vincent.
It was a tale of two games for the Jimmies so far this season. The differences between their win against Wawasee and their loss to Concord were night and day according to Vincent.
"In week one against Wawasee, after we were able to kind of get rid of those first game jitters, because we turned the ball over a couple times on our first few drives but offensively, we were really efficient and opportunistic when we got the ball, and we made some huge plays on defense as well, just getting some big stops and turnovers," says Vincent.
"Coming out to Concord, we expected a lot, but then we lost seven key starters, so we just went out there, with just a big old chip on our shoulder, obviously that didn't work out for us but I think we needed that game to kind of humble us," says Owen Biggs, Jimtown senior linebacker.
The Eddies and Jimmies will kick off from Leo Hoffman Field at 7 p.m.