Idalou and shallowater have met many times..the rivalry goes back decades, but on Friday, the teams will play the first ever televised friday night football game in Texas.
“It just puts a little more pressure on you, but also a lot of fun,” Shallowater Head Coach Bryan Wood said.
“Being on TV, it’s going to be a great opportunity for West Texas I think, and in general small school football,” Lofton said.
But with the exposure comes the added pressure.
“My nerves kick in around June,” Lofton said. “So i can only imagine once those guys heard they were going to be on tv, their nerves got up quite a little bit.”
Both coaches have a similar plan to combat it.
Wood said “We just haven’t talked about it to be honest with ya.”
“I talk about it as little as possible,” Lofton added.
Lofton acknowledged that you can only do so much to keep it off the players’ minds.
“You can tell them all you want, but you turn on Fox Sports Southwest to catch a Ranger game now and you’ve got commercials coming on with Idalou-Shallowater on there.”
“Pregame and seeing all that, they’re going to be wide eyed and really trying to soak it up and I’m gonna let them do that,” Wood admitted. “But when we come out for the kickoff, it’ll be focus on everything that goes on in between the lines, not outside.”
