Faith game determines playoff opponent
MARBLE FALLS — The Faith Academy football team’s 64-8 loss to Bulverde Bracken on Oct. 28 has the Flames fired up.
Needless to say, Faith (5-4, 2-2) looks forward to facing San Antonio The Winston, 8565 Ewing Halsell in San Antonio, at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 4.
“I’m not at all pleased, and hopefully the players are not and hopefully the players are mad and ready to play football again,” head coach Russ Roberts said. “It will either motivate us to play one of the best games we’ve played or it’s going to deflate us and it’ll be hard for us to get back up.”
The safety net is Faith already secured a playoff berth. But the game against The Winston will determine the Flames finishing in third place with a win and facing Dallas The Covenant, last year’s Class 2A state runner-up, or fourth with a loss and facing Abilene Christian High in the first round of the playoffs. Faith already knows it will have to play Nov. 12 in a road game.
But before the Flames can focus on the postseason, they must contend with The Winston senior running back LaJordan Wilkerson. While Bracken senior running back Grady Achilles was a speed runner, Wilkerson is a power runner, Roberts said.
“He can run over you, he can outrun you, he can run around you, he can run through you,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference. We can focus very quickly on our job to stop Wilkerson.”
Achilles scored six touchdowns on runs of 5, 1, 45, 62, 32 and 10 and a 50-yard kickoff return.
In addition, Bracken rushed 14 times for 172 yards, averaging 12.2 yards a carry in ending the game with the 45-point mercy rule by halftime.
Needless to say, the Flames will be ready for a chance at entering the playoffs with some momentum, while an Eagles’ win means they will qualify for the postseason.
If Faith is to have success, the defense must force turnovers. When the Flames have won, they have averaged being a positive 2 in that category. When they’ve lost in that statistic, Faith has lost the game.
“What we’ve done is we’ve made good football teams look like they’re no factor,” Roberts said. “(Christian Academy of San Antonio) did not have a good night against us, but they are a good football team, and we just completely shut them down. And the fact we held them scoreless is why we’re already certified to play in the postseason. If they had scored two or three touchdowns, then we would be in a situation where we had to win.”