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Week 5: A Closer Look With Mark Miller
Half-way done with the 2024 regular season. Wow, hard to believe! Our radio game, Fairless at Northwest, was just as we expected. Well-coached, well-played, very competitive and a great atmosphere. Plus, the fine folks at Northwest fed us food from The Nook – one of my favorite places. If you go there for lunch, consider the Reuben sandwich. It is the best I’ve ever had and that includes deli’s in Seattle and New York City! Smoked, very lean corned beef with sauerkraut on thick marble rye –
yum!
Next week we have Jackson at Perry. It will be our first look at the Polar Bears and I am anxious to see their QB. I saw him as a freshman and thought he would be a good one and he is. The Perry defense can be very tough though so it should be a great match-up.
We are beginning to get a pretty solid idea of which teams are good and which teams are in for a tough year. Five games in the books and league games just under way and Stark County already has ZERO teams that are undefeated. Just outside the county West Branch and Manchester are both 5-0. Things can certainly change but for now Massillon, Green, McKinley, Lake and Northwest look to be in for great years. Injuries have a lot to say about how a team will finish so stay tuned.
I have always said one of the big differences between Stark County football and other parts of the state are the coaches. We have great head and assistant coaches in this area. Coaching a bunch of teenagers to a winning season is hard work but coaching a team that is going thru a tough, losing season is even harder. To keep the kids practicing hard, not blaming each other for the bad things that happen, and leading the players to keep getting better is very difficult when Friday nights keep ending in losses.
Aside from high school football, I am also a big college and NFL fan. I often gauge my weekends by how my favorite teams do. My perfect weekend is if Canton South wins on Friday night, BGSU and Mount Union wins on Saturday and the Browns win on Sunday. If they all win it is a grand slam! Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often and it’s usually the Browns that screw things up! If you don’t know, South, BG and the Browns are teams I played for and my son coaches at Mount.
Like a true Browns fan maybe they will win this weekend and if the others also win