Monday Morning Quarterback Herkimer Magicians

Week five of high school football left one Class 'C' east school undefeated. The Herkimer Magicians were nothing short of magical in their first five games, averaging nearly fifty points per game. But defense may carry the Magicians into the post season. A flashy, high powered offense may attract Magicians fans far and wide. But a stout defense only giving up thirteen and a half points per game is how Herkimer stays grounded. The biggest challenge the Magicians are facing isn't statistical numbers but the number of players. Head Coach Alan Steele said, "We have an issue with the amount of kids we have on the team. At times it's tough for us to take kids out because we have 24 kids and a couple kids dinged up at times. So we're finding difficulty with getting kids out of the game, which we'd like to get them a rest." Even with a 33 point victory Friday night, Herkimer senior wide out Gio Aceto still thinks they could have done better. "Definitely at the end of the game we could have maybe shut them out. That was the plan but they got a couple good touchdowns, so we could've definitely shut them out and that was a little let down there." Even after a dominating five and 'o' start to this season, senior quarterback Sean Crandall knows where his team has to improve. "We need to work on everything, we don't have everything down pat yet, we still have a lot of stuff we can fix. The best part about that means we can still get better from now, so we still have some stuff to work on and hopefully we get it done." Coach Steele knows to keep the philosophy simple because this season is far from over. "You know what, we don't really look to the future, it's one thing we've talked about is winning game by game. This week is obviously huge for us for a lot of reasons, one it's for league championship, outright league championship, two it's for a playoff berth and that's still up in the air so we've got a lot riding on this team." With the end of the regular season approaching the magicians know where they want to be when the dust has settled. Quarterback Sean Crandall added, "We want to be playing for some kind of a championship and I know our school hasn't done it in a while so hopefully we can get it done this year." In order to win that league championship Herkimer must first get through Frankfort-Schuyler this Friday. The season may be five games deep but the class 'c' championship could come down to that match-up.