SportsZone Football Friday game of the week preview: Capital City vs. Hickman
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Both the Hickman Kewpies and Capital City Cavaliers will search for their first wins of the season on Friday night, as they meet in ABC17's game of the week.
You can watch the game live on KZOU over the air channel 17.3 at 7 p.m. 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
Or watch game replay in the player below.
Hickman started the 2021 season with two-straight losses to Francois Howell and Helias Catholic, however, through those losses the identity of the team came out.
"One of the things that we focused on, coming into the season, was battling adversity," head coach Cedric Alvis said. "Bad things are going to happen. How can we handle that, are we going to stick together and continue to fight? The first two weeks, unfortunately, things haven't gone how we wanted them to, but in terms of playing with effort, sticking together, and battling adversity our boys have done a phenomenal job."
Alvis added that the team's first win will represent not only trust within his team, but also within the community.
"As a staff everything we've been talking about his offseason, getting that first win kind of solidifies that. It adds trust to it," he said. "You look at those successful coaches with Saban, I know he's at the highest level with college, but even locally you look at coach Hentges over at Helias, the success that he has had. If you look at their program, from freshman to varsity, it's the same. They're all bought in. They all pay attention to the small things."
You can watch the full interview with Alvis in the video player below.
Capital City is under the direction of first-year head coach Joe Collier who said the main focus of his team is sticking to what works for them. The Cavaliers lost their week one matchup with Warrensburg, followed by another loss to Center in week two.
"We just really go out of ourselves in that second game," Collier said. "I guess as a first-year head coach, that second game taught me to make sure that I stick with the identity and do what works for us."
He added that he feels like a win would validate his players' hard work.
"It would build morale," he said. "It would get them believing in theirselves. We got such, I think, such a good team. They just need to crack that mold and win early in the season to get them going. I think if we can get a win it will propel us to, kind of, believing in themselves."
You can watch the full interview with Collier in the video player below.
Alvis and Collier are no strangers going into the week three matchup. The two met when Alvis was an assistant coach at Battle High School and Collier was an assistant at Rock Bridge. However, they said their relationship goes far beyond the game.
"We just make sure we have fun during these times." Collier said. "We like to compete and we like to talk about it afterwards."
"Both of us kind of have similar upbringings. Football means the same to both of us in terms of why we got into coaching, the benefits that we get out of it, and then our goals. For a long time I was a defensive coordinator and he was a defensive coordinator, so we were able to bond and get close, just discussing the X's and O's in the offseason. I'm good with his family, he's good with mine, so it's a lot deeper than football he's a real good guy."
The duo even has a game week tradition. Collier will pick out a song to send Alvis before the game and Alvis will always fire back with another song.
"I've been searching for a song to send him. It's funny, but more competitive songs," Collier said. "We just send it to him and he says 'you sent that one ha, watch this one.' It's fun and games."
Alvis said if there were a winner in who picks out the best songs, it would definitely be Collier.
"I think when you initiate it, you already have something planned out, you know what I mean? He does it with Conyers as well from when I was at Battle and he was at Rock Bridge coaching. He had a song for each one of us, every coach had a different song. I would imagine Joe has had that song picked out for a couple of months now."
Capital City and Hickman will kickoff at Hickman High School on Friday night at 7 p.m.
