The intensity in practice has been at a season-high this week as Fayetteville-Manlius has prepared for Friday’s home matchup with Christian Brothers Academy.
Returning players for F-M (2-1) have set the tone and have reminded the newcomers that this game means something more than the first three did.
And that has a lot to do with what happened last season when these teams faced one another. F-M really struggled with the simple things, but they don’t care about last year and want to knock off a 3-0 CBA team.
But Central New York’s Game of the Week will be missing a Division I football player in CBA’s Stevie Scott, who suffered an injury in last week’s game against Elmira.
As for F-M, the question marks coming into the week were Mikey Porter and Tim Shaw. Porter is going to be the quarterback when the Hornets take the field and Shaw remains the unknown going into gameday.
Even though the junior captain hasn’t been practicing and may not play Friday, the Hornets are ready to play this game. You can see it in practice.
That’s one thing that the returning players brought up to the first-year guys. They haven’t allowed the younger guys to talk smack and have said that, last year, going into the CBA game, they were more focused on intimidating the opposing players than they were on actually preparing for the game.
Because of the kind of game it was last time around, when CBA won 41-0 in front of the entire school, the Hornets are about as motivated as a high school football team can be. Every player on the team is focused on getting better and improving as a team.
The fact that this is a home game is just more motivation for the Hornets. The players are over hearing whispers about it in the hallways at school. They know that they are going to play under the lights with the community and their classmates watching.
That idea hasn’t overwhelmed them and they have responded to it well in practice, something that head coach Paul Muench talked to his team about. Muench was pleased with the energy that the guys brought to practice.
But throughout the week, assistant coach Dan Conley said that they have to work hard and be a team if they want to be successful. Conley reminded his team that they will be able to live with the result, win or lose, if they just play their hardest.
