LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – The Monterey Plainsmen (6-4) will try to keep their season alive Friday with a six-hour bus trip to El Paso Americas (6-4)- a team that reached the postseason with four combined wins over Coronado, Hanks, Bel Air, and Parkland. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got a good football team, they\u2019ve got some decent size. They\u2019ve got a really good wide receiver that we\u2019re going to have to keep in check. They\u2019re going to have a home crowd behind them, so it\u2019s going to be a tough ball game,\u201d said Monterey head coach Jason Sims. <\/p>\n
This will not be Monterey\u2019s first trip to the Borderland. In week three, they lost to the Franklin Cougars 49-42. The same Franklin team played Americas weeks later and won 73-20. However, Coach Sims says the score difference in the two games should never be used to predict the outcome. <\/p>\n
\u201cPrevious game scores don\u2019t put any points on the board for you in a football game, so we\u2019re going to have to go out there and compete and show them the utmost respect and maybe some of the fear factor might creep into them from the score watching if that\u2019s what they want to do, but we\u2019re not going to participate in that,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
While Monterey\u2019s Sept. 12 outing was affected by travel issues and weather, Sims says he\u2019s thankful his team already has made an El Paso trip so his players can be more familiar with the atmosphere for Friday\u2019s playoff game. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that we\u2019ve gone to El Paso already this year is big because it\u2019s not going to be a new thing. We already understand what we\u2019re about to get ourselves into, and so I think that\u2019s going to be a huge benefit.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kickoff set for 7 p.m. CT at the Socorro ISD Student Activity Center. The winner will face Fort Worth Arlington Heights or Fort Worth Brewer. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done some really good things. We\u2019ve had a pretty good season overall. We\u2019ve lost some really tight ball games to some really good football teams, and I think that belief is there, and we\u2019ve had the talent to go beat teams when we play well,\u201d said Coach Sims. \u201cI feel like our run game is finally where we want it to be, our passing game has developed. We\u2019re starting to see some better defensive line play and flying around and better defensive play than we did kind of in the middle of the season, and so we\u2019re playing the football you need to be playing at the time you need to be playing it.\u201d <\/p>\n