It’ll be a rematch of last year’s Class 1A championship game when Dike-New Hartford hosts Grundy Center in Week 3.
The Wolverines (2-0) are coming off last week’s 7-0 win at Aplington-Parkersburg, where a third quarter touchdown was the difference in a game won in the margins. Head Coach Don Betts says they’ll need to play their most complete game yet.
“Offensively, we’ve got to be able to stack good plays on top of good plays,” Betts says. “That’s been a struggle for us. Even in the opening win, had to consistently stack good plays on good plays. So we’ve got to get better at doing that. We’re going to have to play a much cleaner ball game to have a chance against Grundy Center. They lost a lot of kids off of that state championship team we played in the dome last year, but they bring back some exceptional players. Judd Jirovsky, in my opinion, is the best player in the state of Iowa, hands down.”
The Wolverines have shut out both opponents so far.
Grundy Center (2-0) was efficient in last week’s 41-7 win at Columbus Catholic, scoring on six of the first seven drives. Head Coach Travis Zajac looks forward to an electric atmosphere in what’ll be the sixth meeting in four seasons.
“We’ve played a ton of football games against one another over the last several seasons,” Zajac says. “And there’s a lot of really cool things about that. It’s a wonderful thing for obviously our football teams, but also our schools and our communities, and a chance to celebrate the beauty that is high school sports when done well. It’s always a pleasure to coach against Coach Betts and his staff and how they do their thing. And we’re just going to work on what we need to do to get better, try to improve from week two to week three, and it should be a heck of a football game.”
The Spartans will go for their sixth straight win in the series. It’ll start at 7:00 p.m. at Gunderson Sports Complex.
