Friday’s trip to Calhoun will give Central football team chance to see how it handles rematch

CAMP POINT, Ill. — Hello, old friend.

For the third time in a little more than a calendar year, the Camp Point Central and Hardin Calhoun football teams will clash when the Panthers make the 90-minute trek south to Hardin on Friday.

“They played us as tough as anybody last year no matter who we played,” Central coach Brad Dixon said.

Very few teams were able to keep within shouting distance of the Panthers during their undefeated 2023 season that culminated with the Class 1A state championship, but the Warriors did twice. They gave Central two of its three closest contests of the season, including its biggest scare — a 30-22 Week Two affair in Camp Point that was mere inches from potentially going to overtime.

On a fourth and goal with 4 ½ minutes left in regulation, Panthers senior linebacker Conner Griffin knifed through a sea of bodies at the goal line to stop Miles Lorton’s quarterback sneak. The Panthers took over in the shadow of their own goal post, but Elijah Genenbacher and Drew Paben each broke off long runs on that drive to punctuate a victory that helped catapult the Panthers to a perfect season.

“It was definitely an eye opener,” senior linebacker and fullback Konnor Bush said. “We had everybody cramping. We didn’t know how the game was going to finish because we had so many guys cramping up. We had some of our best players on the sideline. Getting in there and stopping them was just so surreal because it was our first moment of adversity. It showed us that we could go far.”

Two months later, these two hard-nosed teams duked it out once again, this time in the second round of the playoffs. Although the score differential was more than twice as great — Central won 32-14 — it wasn’t any less stressful for Dixon and the Panthers, who trailed 7-6 before scoring on their final drive of the first half and only led 20-14 entering the fourth quarter before two Paben touchdown runs in the final 9:14 put the game out of reach.

“The score looked a little bit bigger than it was,” Dixon said. “It was still a battle and one of those super tough games.”

Dixon hopes the playoff experience from last year will serve the Panthers well in what promises to be a raucous environment.

“Hopefully the fact that we were just there in a win-or-go-home situation in the playoffs means that our guys won’t be wowed by the moment,” Dixon said.

While Dixon understands Friday’s heavyweight bout carries significant weight in gauging the best of the best in Class 1A, he knows the Warriors won’t be wowed by the moment.

“The moment isn’t going to be too big for them,” Dixon said. “They’re not going to care what we did last year. They just see what they’re capable of doing, and we’re standing in their way of a 9-0 season.”

The key in Dixon’s eyes? Understand this is a big game, but the result does not determine the course of the Panthers’ season — win or lose.

“For us to go down there into that atmosphere, you can’t ask for anything more. That’s what we need,” Dixon said. “Win or lose, this game will make us better. It’s still Week Two, we have to understand that. If we win, we haven’t won the state championship. If we lose, we have seven more games left. 

“We’re going to find out a lot about ourselves in this one.”

The roster dynamics and constructions of these teams have changed from 2023 to 2024. The Panthers lost 13 seniors from their state championship squad — most of them starters, including quarterback Nick Moore — while the Warriors returned much of the firepower from last year’s team including 230-pound fullback Conner Longnecker.

Containing Longnecker is only the beginning, though.

“They’re very good at what they do, kind of like us,” Dixon said. “We’re a Wing T football team, we have things that we like to do, and we force defenses to be disciplined. They’re a triple option version of that, so they’re going to call a single play to one direction, and the quarterback chooses between different options. You can’t sell out against their 230-pound fullback because the quarterback can keep it, and if he doesn’t keep it, he can pitch it. Then they have a lot of different counters and jets and things.”

Bush and the Panthers have seen enough of the Warriors to know its tendencies, but that familiarity is no good if the execution and tenacity isn’t there.

“You can know exactly what they’re running, but if they play harder than you and they have better pad level than you, they’re going to win just because you can’t stop it,” Bush said. “You still have to play as hard as you can for as long as you can, have low pad level, hit them as hard as you can.”

After a 69-0 plastering of North Greene in Week One — a game that Dixon commended his players for not just coasting through — senior nose tackle and left tackle Wyatt Vandevelde said this week’s marquee matchup has the Panthers ready for a fist fight.

“Knowing that there’s a chance we could lose and we have to prepare for every possible outcome just puts you out on the edge, and you have to figure out the way to just push through that,” Vandevelde said.

How do the Panthers push through?

“Relentless effort, smacking them, and doing what we do best, just mowing people down,” Vandevelde said.