PREP FOOTBALL: Poka knows all about challenge it faces vs. No. 1 Sweet Water

Loachapoka’s players are not being shielded from the future or the past this week.

Coach Jerome Tate wants his players to know exactly who they’re traveling to face in the Class 1A quarterfinals Friday night.

“They need to know who they’re going up against,” Tate said. “In all my readings, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard about David not wanting to know about Goliath.”

“Goliath,” in this case, is Sweet Water.

The Bulldogs have not lost in 1A competition since 2005, a string that reaches back 44 games to a second-round loss to Brantley.

They have won three straight state championships and were wire-to-wire No. 1 in each of the past three seasons.

This year’s version of Sweet Water’s only loss came to Thomasville — the No. 6 team in 4A before it bowed out to UMS-Wright last week — and boasts wins over last year’s 2A state champion Leroy and Bastrop, a 7-4 team in Louisiana’s second-largest classification that also happens to be the alma mater of Auburn University freshman wideout DeAngelo Benton.

Tate’s players know all this. But he said it isn’t having any effect on the way they’re preparing for Friday night.

“We’re doing the same thing we’ve done all year long,” he said. “We’ll just watch film, see their tendencies and go from there. They don’t do anything different. We know they’re going to run the football, and pass on occasion.”

No, Sweet Water doesn’t leave much room for experimentation in its offensive gameplan.

But yes, much like the Reeltown team that beat Loachapoka, 27-0, earlier this season, it doesn’t have to.

The Bulldogs are coming off a 70-0 win over Providence Christian in the first round of the playoffs and a 42-6 victory over No. 8 McKenzie
in which they rushed for 324 yards last week.

“The line executes so good, and their kids run hard,” Tate said. “They’re really buying into what they’re doing.”

But Loachapoka is no slouch either, a fact the No. 5 Indians proved in an 18-12 win over No. 4 Maplesville last week.

And Tate said it wasn’t even that close.

“We had a couple of touchdowns called back (one on a Rontavis Dinkins punt return), and we gave up a cheap touchdown there at the end,” he said. “That score doesn’t really indicate anything. But Maplesville was Maplesville and that’s behind us. We’re focused on Sweet Water now.”

Loachapoka is in the quarterfinals for the fourth time in the past six seasons and the third time since the Bulldogs put the Indians out in that round in 2004.

But they have yet to make it past this hurdle in the 36 years they’ve played football.

So while Tate wants his players to be cognizant of the past and future this week, he also wants them to know what being in the quarterfinals means: They are presently one of the eight best Class 1A teams in the state.

“There’s a bunch of teams that wish they were playing Sweet Water right now, wish they were playing anybody,” Tate said. “We’re just honored that we’re one of the privileged few that can still say we’re practicing. And I’m quite sure the kids at Sweet Water feel the same way.”

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No. 5 Loachapoka (10-1) at No. 1 Sweet Water (11-1)
Loachapoka Key Players: OL/DL Jerome Greer (Sr., 6-0, 195); QB/DB Patrick Moore (Sr., 5-11, 170); WR/DB Quindravius Richardson (Sr., 6-2, 195)
Sweet water Key Players: RB/LB Chris Landrum (Jr., 6-2, 215); RB/DL Jeremy Landrum (Sr., 5-11, 190); RB/LB Johnny Lockett (Sr., 5-9, 195)
stat pack: Richardson and Tracy Brooks have combined for nine interceptions ... Moore has accounted for 2,722 yards and 34 touchdowns ... The Bulldogs have not lost in 1A competition since 2005.
series information: Sweet Water beat the Indians, 35-7, in the 2004 quarterfinals.