“You’ve got to be the best to beat the best”: Hallsville football continues summer practice
HALLSVILLE, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Hallsville football team will look to clean out the bad taste that 2022's district title loss to Bowling Green left in the group's mouth headed into the 2023 season. Head coach Justin Conyers said his team knows that it will have tough opponents week-in and week-out in the coming weeks.
Conyers and company will return quite a few seniors, but will have a lot of new faces up front.
"Offensive line, we graduated five, again, for our second time in four years. It's been a lot of work this summer, but we've had some scrimmages and our guys are working hard and looking good up front. Really excited about where we are right now, as a team," he said.
The Indians have competed in more 7-on-7 scrimmages than usual this summer. Conyers said, after watching those scrimmages, he feels like his team is going to be more balanced this year.
"The big thing is just getting better each time we go out and watching our guys compete. That's the biggest thing is going out and competing and, you know, we're not winning games right now. We're still 0-0 after we leave those places and watching the film and just getting better," Conyers said.
Last year Colton Nichols took quite a few reps at quarterback, but Conyers said that he will be moving around a bit more in 2023. He's going to be all over the field, including defense, which the team hopes will be a lot for opposing coaches to keep track of on Friday nights.
The Indians will kick off the season on the road against Palmyra. Hallsville is 3-2, since 2020, against the Panthers and Conyers said this has become a match up that his group looks forward to starting the season with.
"It stems back to the COVID year, in 2020. We went to them on a whim, week three. We picked up that game at 2:35 on a Friday afternoon and we had game planned for somebody else all week and we got out the bus, we went and played and they steam rolled us in that week," he said. "Then, we ended up playing them in the state quarterfinals that year and that was the year that Harrison Fowler broke his leg in the second play of the game and we played extremely well. We ended up losing by 14 and then ever since then we said 'hey, let's make this a game.'"
Hallsville fell just short of a district championship in 2022, as Bowling Green ended the group's season 57-8. It was the second-straight year the Conyers and company's season ended to Bobcats, but he said, in 2023, he thinks the Indians will move up to Class 3. That move will mean that Hallsville won't have to go through Bowling Green, but will go through some tough competition.
"You got to be the best to beat the best," he said.
The 2023 season will kick off on August 25 at Palmyra at 7 p.m.
