SportsZone Football Friday Game of the Week Preview: Marquette at Hickman
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Hickman football team will look to kickstart another program-altering season when the Marquette Mustangs visit Columbia for week one of the high school football season.
The Kewpies and the Mustangs are our SportsZone Football Friday Game of the Week. You can watch the game live over the air channel 17.3 on KZOU and online on the ABC 17 News website and on CTV and cellphone apps.
Here is a look at other local listings:
- DirecTV - Channel 18
- Dish Network - Channel 32
- Mediacom - Channel 12 & 709
- Centurylink - Channel 12
- Spectrum - Channel 183
Second-year head coach Justin Conyers hopes to take another step forward in 2025, after bringing his alma mater from no wins in 2023 to four wins in 2024 just one season at the helm. Over the summer, he said that his guys wanted even more out of that first season, as they believed they could have even won more games. As a result, there is no complacency with the progress they've made so far.
Conyers said there has been an intense focus, from his players, on creating consistency at practice. Something they hope will lead to wins on the field.
"That's what's been probably the most impressive thing about this group is really focusing in on what we're talking about and creating that consistency each day at practice. We talk about we want to make practice much harder than it's ever going to be in the game, very demanding, both physically and mentally," he said. "We've challenged our kids to that and, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you every day's been perfect, but it's been much better this season. The kids are really into what we expect of our program at this point."
The biggest change that Coach Conyers has seen out of his Kewpie players wasn't even on the gridiron. It came in the weight room, this summer.
"You go back and you look at where we were, let's call it, 18-19 months ago, whenever we started the offseason program, when I first took this job and our kids just they weren't they didn't look like they were ready to go out and play Class 6 football," Conyers said. "Over the course of a year and a half, what we've done in the weight room to develop our bodies, to be able to go out and physically compete to me is just light years ahead of where we were."
Week one is always tough from a preparation standpoint, as the only film that teams have is from the preseason jamborees, just one week prior. That's been a challenge that Conyers and his staff have tackled in the lead-up to week one. Through that preparation, he said he feels like this is a pretty even matchup for his team.
"Everybody knows in jamborees you're not going to get really everything of what everybody's doing. So, that's the challenge you face as a coach is really, you know, trying to identify where that personnel is. You know? For us, one of the good things we see is there's a lot of people back for them. You know, they lost some really key pieces too and we feel like this is a very evenly matched football game for us," he said.
The Kewpies and the Mustangs will kickoff the 2025 season at 7 p.m. in Columbia.
Be sure to watch highlights of this game and several others from around Mid-Missouri on SportsZone Football Friday, during our 10 o'clock newscast.
