Hudsonville and Rockford were originally scheduled to play September 11th, but the high school football season did not start until the following week because of COVID-19.
This week the Eagles and Rams will indeed meet, it will be a second round game in the division one playoffs and the game of the week on the Blitz.
"At first when we heard we weren't going to be able to play them in the regular season, all year that is what we have been looking forward to getting another shot at them in the playoffs," Hudsonville senior running back Trevor McEachern said. "We are rivals so it is always a fun game."
"I just look at it one week at a time and we see Hudsonville on the schedule and that is something that we are really looking forward to," Rockford senior linebacker Ben Tadych added. "They are a good team so we are ready to play them."
Hudsonville scored 52 points in last weeks playoff opener thanks in part to the play of senior quarterback Brennan Hayes who is not just doing it with his arm, but his legs as well.
"That is one thing I was working on the off season is trying to be a balanced quarterback," Hayes said. "So doing that and also with the blocking we've had has been really great for me to have big holes to run through and show what I can do."
Rockford's defense has played really well.
Two weeks ago it shut down the high powered Grandville running attack and last week it put the clamps on West Ottawa's passing game.
This week it faces a team that has been able to do both.
"It is going to kind of take a game plan of both of those games and kind of balance it," Rockford senior cornerback and wide receiver Luke McLean said. "They do run the ball well and pass the ball well so we just have to game plan for that and I think we will do a good job."
The Eagles have been an excellent second half team this season.
"We try to play one-way kids so we feel pretty fresh the whole game number one," Eagles head coach Brent Sandee said. "Number two I think we make some pretty good adjustments with our coaching staff and we kind of tweak some things as we go and we give a lot of ownership to the kids to be able to make adjustments on the fly and they have proven to be able to do that."
Despite both teams playing Saturday afternoon games in the first round of the playoffs, the decision was made to play this game on Friday night.
"Friday night football is a special deal for these kids," Rockford head coach Brent Cummings said. "There was an original discussion to stick with Saturday just ease of schedule and we had already gone through that, but when you talk more about the kids and what they would enjoy more, a Friday night for the kids is an important deal."
The winner will advance to the district final to play the Traverse City West/Grandville winner next week.
