High school football rivalry games seemed to be in serious jeopardy just a few short weeks ago. The COVID-19 pandemic has put an umbrella of uncertainty over the entire fall sports season, but due to the preparedness, hard work and discipline of coaches and players, we enter week two of the high school football season in the Times News area.

On the docket this week, is one of those coveted rivalry games as Marian heads to Panther Valley Stadium to take on the Panthers in the Game of the Week.

It might sound cliché, but history has proved that you can throw out the record books any time the Colts (0-1) and Panthers (0-1) square off. In what is probably the most intense and historic rivalry in the Times News area, these two squads are coming off rough week one losses to Schuylkill League Big School Division teams, Jim Thorpe and Lehighton.

The Colts fell to the Olympians 43-0 last week, while PV was defeated 40-12 by the Indians. This contest not only has bragging rights on the line, but a winning result could provide the jump-start each team is looking for to propel it forward through the rest of its schedule.

As is usually the case in a rivalry game, emotions will be running high at the start of the ballgame.

“Our first game at home, playing a rival, I know our kids are excited. So, that will be key for us early on, controlling our emotions and playing with discipline,” said Panthers’ head coach Rick Jones. “We just need to come out and establish physicality from the get go. I think we’re a much more physical team than we were last season at this time. No doubt our goal is to play physical and disciplined football from the start.”

Marian is coming into its week two matchup with the Panthers after facing its first opponent since week eight of the 2019 season. Due to a lack of numbers, the Colts had to forfeit their final two games last season, and their scrimmage was canceled before the start of the 2020 season. The Colts have 31 underclassmen, with 20-plus athletes on the roster that have never played high school football before this season.

Although the end result wasn’t exactly what Marian was looking for against Jim Thorpe, the valuable experience gained is a step in the right direction for the rebuilding Colts program.

“We were able to get some of our guys on film and then evaluate, which is something we haven’t been able to do. Now we can build of what we’ve learned, we can see the positives and we can see the mistakes we made and get better from them,” said Marian head coach Stan Dakosty. “It’s a learning process for a lot of our guys, but we definitely have some talent here and I think we can become a solid football team as the season goes on.”

Neither team was able to generate much offense last week, so getting off to a good start offensively is among the top priorities for both the Colts and Panthers.

The passing game is an area where each team will look to improve on from last week as the Marian offense completed just one pass for one yard, while the Panther Valley air attack completed two passes for 16 yards. Big plays often decide rivalry games, and a big play in the passing game could be a steppingstone for either offense to get going.

“A key for us this week is our passing game has to be better. We had some opportunities last week, and I think our quarterback did a nice job of giving us opportunities, but we have to do a better job of making plays. We had a few drops,” said Jones.

Dakosty agreed that the Marian passing attack will need to be better this week as well for the Colts to be successful offensively.

“Protection wise, we need to improve there. We didn’t give our quarterback Julian Cerullo much time to throw the football and I gained a lot of respect for him last week, because he took some serious hits, and just kept getting up and dusting himself off,” said Dakosty. “We have some speed on the outside that if we can improve our protection, we can make some plays.”

As uncertainty fills the air weekly with everything that surrounds the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, high school football is here to help everyone forget about the troubles of the world for just a little while. There’s no denying that uncertainty has been abundant as of late, but as rare as it may be in today’s current landscape, there is one certainty that high school football fans can count on come Friday night, and that is two rival teams giving it there all on the gridiron to make their communities proud, which is undoubtedly what people need to see right now.