Rod's Friday thoughts

It will be a quiet weekend for high school sports with the football playoffs not resuming until Monday and District Volleyball tournaments beginning next week. The Governor football team will be practicing getting ready for Brandon Valley and their talented quarterback Austin Sumner. I think Sumner is still a notch ahead of Jared Hannigan of Aberdeen Centra. Both bring different styles to the table. Both can run and pass but Hannigan is better at the run and Sumner is better at the pass despite the fact he is also BV's leading rusher on the season. Not sure how healed up the Governors will be. Graham Schuetzle and his arm and Adam Deneke most notably with his back. Graham will play and just try to keep him off the field. The key is the Governor defense which did an ok job against Sumner the first time. Held him to 189 yards passing, which is below their per game average of 251 yards. He has thrown 33 touchdown passes this season. That's 12 more than he had when he played here the first time. He also has been intercepted only 5 times. And the Governor ground game will probably see nothing but Red jerseys in the box lined up to stop the run. If Pierre wins they would play their semi final game a week from tomorrow either at Sioux Falls Washington or they would host Yankton. And deep down don't we all wish that just for once in recent years, we could have an all ESD finals in the dome. Mr. Whitney would probably want to change the playoff system again.

Now on to volleyball. Pierre is the third seed and will go to Huron on Thursday night at 7 p.m. at the Huron Arena. Pierre can win this match. Huron won the two regular season matches in 5 and 4 games. Pierre went 0-6 against their fellow district opponents during the regular season. But last night Pierre showed signs they can play aggressivly and take advantage of their opponents mistakes. But those service errors at in-opportune times have always seemed to catch up with Pierre this year. Pierre blocked well at the net I thought last night. I think they are ready to put a complete match together. They have to. Time is starting to run out.