It is now playoff time for the North Sunflower Academy Rebels.
Having earned a berth in the 2017 State Eight Man Playoffs, the 4-4 Rebels will begin their postseason play at 7 p.m. this Friday by traveling to Coushatta, La. to take on the 8-1 Riverdale Academy Rebels.
With the playoffs affording the opportunity to start over, NSA Head Coach Michael Ward observed, “We are blessed to be able to have basically a clean slate to play with. If we play our kind of football, good things can happen.”
This Friday night the No. 7 ranked NSA squad will travel the roughly 260 miles to do battle with a Riverdale Academy team which is ranked No. 2 in the eight man league.
“Riverdale presents a big challenge”, said Coach Ward, “they have a lot of speed we’ll have to contain.”
Riverdale Academy has turned in strong performances and currently owns an eight game win streak. Serving as the only loss suffered by the Louisiana squad thus far was a season-opening 28-14 decision to currently undefeated, and top-ranked, Humphreys Academy of Belzoni.
Those Rebels from Louisiana will come into the postseason after enjoying an open date last Friday.
Meanwhile that same night, the Rebels of NSA found themselves on the short end of a 38-20 home-field regular season finale against Sharkey-Issaquena Academy of Rolling Fork.
Historically, this Friday’s game marks the first in years between NSA and Riverdale Academy.
Should NSA prevail in their upcoming game with Riverdale Academy, next Friday they will take on this week’s match-up between a pair of Louisiana teams in the form of Briarfield Academy and Tallulah Academy.
