By By Matthew Nascone
The Northview Chiefs opened the 2007 football season last Friday with a win over Pensacola Catholic, a team that perennially makes the Class 2A playoffs in Florida. This week the Chiefs come back to facing Class 2B opponents, with the formidable Chipley Tigers invading Bratt Friday night.
Chipley is the team that ended Northview's perfect season last year in the first round of the FHSAA playoffs and the Chiefs have not forgotten.
"Our kids are not stupid, they know who beat us last year," NHS head coach Cody Keene said. "But we have a good group of seniors who are mature enough to know what to do this year out on the field."
The Chiefs squeezed past Catholic 14-13 and Chipley came from behind for a 26-20 victory over Vernon High School last week.
"Chipley is a good football team," Keene said. "This is another good challenge for our kids."
Northview has 16 seniors this year, but Chipley has a trio of senior skill players the Chiefs will have to watch out for.
"They have a good quarterback in senior Zack Schaubhut, who is another big quarterback at 6-foot-4, 200 pounds," Keene said. "And they have a pair of speedsters in Josh Potter and Joe Green."
However, Keene said if the Chiefs go out and execute the game plan they should be fine.
"We are going to try and execute what we do defensively, which is something we were not able to do last week because of the offense Catholic runs," Keene said. "And hopefully with that we can shut down their I-form attack because they will be running right at us."
A few corrections are needed for NHS to come away with another win this week.
"We need to fix the blocking mistakes that we had in the first game on the offensive line and with the fullback," Keene said. "And we need to do a better job of hitting the hole at the point of attack. If we do these things, it should help us win."
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. in Bratt.