Football and Soccer State Preview

Tonight is not only football night for the Lancers but futbol as well. The football team will be beginning their playoff run against the Olathe East Hawks at the College Boulevard Athletic Complex while the boys’ soccer team will take on Washburn-Rural in the semifinals of 6A State semifinal at CBAC as well. The Lancers fans will be torn between both games as they both begin at 7 p.m.

“I think I will be going for the first half of the soccer game,” Senior Cory Perkins said who will be making the trip out to CBAC. “It’s a much bigger game and it’d be cool to witness history.”

After defeating Lawrence 2-0 on Tuesday, the soccer team will be gunning for history as a win tonight would mean that they would be the first ever team in East history to reach the State finals.

Although the team lost their last two games of the regular season, the team has an immense amount of momentum coming into tonight after seemingly dominating their first three games of the playoffs. Senior Tyler Rathbun credits this to the seniors understanding of the situation.

“We all know that this will be our last chance to do something great,” Rathbun said. “We want our senior season to go out with a bang.”

The team will play either Wichita Northwest or Blue Valley Northwest in either the state final at 2 p.m or the third place game at noon on Saturday depending on results.

On the other side of CBAC, the football team will play Olathe East for the second time this season. The Lancers beat Olathe East 41-21 earlier this season in a blowout. The Hawks who are 5-4 were without the third best running back in the Sunflower league, Hayden Frazier. Frazier will come in tonight with 1,287 yards and 13 touchdowns this season.

“We’re going to definitely want to pressure their running game,” senior Will Short said. “We have a lot of different defensive formations to throw at them and we will give Frazier a game to remember.”

The Lancers will still be without senior David Sosna and junior Sage Thompson due to injuries but will still have plenty of threats on offense. Senior quarterback Jordan Darling will be coming into to the game with 1,553 yards and 11 touchdowns in the regular season along with his favorite target, the leading receiver in the Sunflower League senior Connor Rellihan. Rellihan has 785 receiving yards and five touchdowns in nine games.

Tonight will determine whether both teams keep their title hopes alive. As always if you cannot make it out to CBAC for the games you can tune in to smeharbinger.net for live coverage.