Royals coming to Tigertown for showdown

By JON KLEINKNECHT

Inquirer Sports Editor

sports@galioninquirer.com

It’s Show­down Week!

On Fri­day night, the Galion Tigers enter­tain the Wyn­ford Roy­als at Un-ckrich Sta­dium in a game that has the North Cen­tral Con­fer­ence cham­pi­onship on the line.

A win by Galion — the only unde­feated team in NCC play — gives the locals at least a share of the con­fer­ence title.

Wyn­ford goes into the bat­tle with just one loss in the NCC and is look­ing to win its eighth con­sec­u­tive con­fer­ence crown.

Both teams are 7–1 over­all. Galion lost a non-conference season-opener to Mans­field Senior (7–1) 14–7 at Heise Park.

The Roy­als had a 66-games regular-season win­ning streak snapped — the longest active one in Ohio at the time — in the sixth week by Ontario, 26–7. The War­riors are also 4–1 in the NCC (5–3 over­all) enter­ing this week’s action.

A year ago, the Tigers were in the same posi­tion they are cur­rently in going into the ninth week. A defeat at the hands of Mans­field Senior was fol­lowed by seven vic­to­ries in a row.

How­ever, they fell to Wyn­ford in Bucyrus by a 22–20 count. A week later, they bested Ontario to fin­ish the cam­paign at 8–2, miss­ing the play­offs and being denied at least a share of the NCC crown as the Roy­als went 10–0 and fol­lowed with a deep tour­na­ment run.

“It’s not a revenge type thing,” said Galion sixth-year head coach Chris Hawkins about Friday’s mon­ster game. “We didn’t achieve our goals last year (NCC title and a berth in the play­offs) and this is the week we slipped up. We lost in week nine and it left a bit­ter taste in our mouth. I told the kids I wanted them to remem­ber how it felt to lose that game and miss our goals.”

He con­tin­ued, “On the other hand, I want our kids to enjoy the excite­ment of this moment and soak up the sights and sounds of the jour­ney. We are still in pur­suit of our goals. It’s up to us.”

If num­bers are an indi­ca­tion, it should be an epic match-up on the local gridiron.

The Tigers have the high­est scor­ing offense in the NCC, aver­ag­ing 41.1 points a game.

On the other side of the ball, the Roy­als pos­sess the stingi­est defense, yield­ing just 9 points an outing.

Galion has the sec­ond best defense in the loop, giv­ing up 13.1 tal­lies per Fri­day night.

Wyn­ford is the third high­est scor­ing NCC squad aver­ag­ing 33.4 points a contest.

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The sec­ond half of this story is avail­able in PRINTED edi­tions of the Galion Inquirer.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Oct 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.