OTTUMWA —
For longtime Montezuma football fans that make the trip down to Pekin this Friday, it might be an awkward sight.
Across the sidelines will be Joe Donovan, whom Braves fans remember fondly from his successful stint as Montezuma head coach. If there is any awkwardness, however, it will have to come from the Montezuma side of the field.
For Donovan, head coach of the fifth-ranked (A) Pekin Panthers, the Braves will represent just one thing on Friday. An opponent.
“For one night, I just have to put it all aside,” Donovan said. “I’m the youngest of seven children. My family raised me that, if I had to line up against them, I’d better hit them or they we’re going to hit me.
“In the spirit of the game, we got a job to do and we’re going to do it.”
There is certainly plenty of motivation for Donovan, his current team and his former squad to get the job done on the gridiron Friday. Montezuma (5-1) and Pekin (6-0) enter the matchup as the only two remaining unbeaten teams atop Class A, District 6.
To the winner of this contest will be control of an outright district title, which could reward one of the two teams homefield advantage throughout the postseason up to the state semifinals in the Cedar Falls UNI-Dome.
“To be in first place alone is huge,” Donovan said. “I’ve never really gotten caught up in that other stuff, but I do realize the significance of that.”
“This is our biggest game of the year to date. They have a great team. So do we. It definitely has that feel of a big game.”
Donovan is quite familiar with games like these between Montezuma and Pekin at this point of the season. It wasn’t that long ago that the third-year Pekin head coach was preparing the Braves to go up against legendary Panther coach Tom Stone for district crowns.
In fact, the Donovan-coached Braves went up against the Panthers in consecutive seasons with the winner gaining an edge in the race to a district title. In the second of those matchups, Donovan and Montezuma got the best of the Panthers with a win in 2002 giving the Braves a district title.
Donovan kept right on building a successful tradition at Montezuma, culminating with a run in 2005 all the way to within a touchdown of a Class 1A state championship. Donovan has kept his successful philosophy simple over the years, whether it was building a state title contender out of Montezuma or the current highly rated unbeaten Panthers.
“Any good team has to run the football,” Donovan said. “You can get to the run in different ways, but in the end you have to be able to run the ball well and play good defense to make deep postseason runs.”
The Panthers are certainly adhering to that philosphy, leading the district as one of the top 10 teams in the state with 2,163 total rushing yards. Quentin Garrels leads the attack for Pekin as the state’s eighth-leading rusher with 1,180 total yards on the ground and 21 touchdowns.
The Braves defense should test the Panthers’ rushing attack. After splitting their two non-district games, Montezuma has won their first four district contests without allowing a point in that stretch.
Both Montezuma and Pekin also feature two very solid duel threat senior quarterbacks in the Braves’ Zach Gibson and the Panthers’ Graham Wittrock. Both Gibson and Wittrock are among the top five passers in the district and average over 10 yards a carry when asked to run.
While there are some similarities in Donovan’s offensive scheme at Pekin and the current system under Montezuma’s current head coach Keith Sietstra, there are also plenty of differences.
“It’s a new style in terms of a first-year head coach,” Donovan said. “They’re doing things totally different. They run the pistol defense. There’s nothing left over from when I was there.”
With a game as big as this one, any slight distraction could make a difference in winning or losing. Distractions like those can sometimes occur during a homecoming week, which just happens to be this week for Pekin.
That solution was solved in a simple, unique manner. Pekin held all of the normal homecoming ceremonies like the announcement of the king and queen, powderpuff football and other activities last Sunday.
“I’ve never done it anywhere I’ve been, but it really went well,” Donovan said. “There was great student participation. I was really impressed. The students were really involved in getting everything together.
“It was a really nice Sunday afternoon. Now, we can focus on the business on hand. I think this is going to be a little more normal.”
Sports
October 4, 2012
Donovan faces former team as Montezuma, No. 5 Pekin clash
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