It’s pretty amazing that there’s five teams left in our viewing area playing football.  Not sure when the last time that’s happened?  Be sure to watch us live at 6:00 Today (Friday) for out report from Gordon Straley Field.

Wednesday- Fountain Central Running Back Trent Spear feature story.  He missed last season with an injury and is playing at a level this season maybe he didn’t even think he could reach.

Thursday- 6:00 Preview of West Lafayette and Central Catholic.

11:00- Previews of Clinton Central and Rensselaer

Friday- 6:00 Live at Westside.

11:00 Frenzy

Umbrellas, raincoats, water-proof rain boots & sweaters underneath will be necessities this evening at the area football games as temperatures fall, but the rain & wind continues………..

Be sure to join us Tuesday at 7:00 and 7:30.  Purdue Basketball specials with Coach Painter and Coach Versyp.

This Friday kicks off sectional play in high school football and there are many, many great match-ups. The biggest one is arguably Pioneer and Central Catholic. The two top teams in Class A. One poll has Pioneer ranked number one and another poll has Central Catholic ranked as number one. What is so hard to believe is that these two teams are meeting in the FIRST round of SECTIONALS. I’m just saying….

And of course, Friday night football wouldn’t be complete this season without heavy rain in the forecast. Put on your rain boots. It’s going to be a wet, muddy and exciting Friday Night Frenzy.

Skies will be mostly cloudy with north winds 10-15 mph & wind chills in the 30s.

Any showers (even mixed with a few snowflakes) will occur after midnight.  The games should stay dry.

Here is the temperature forecast:

Due to sickness, illness, the flu, whatever you want to call it, Clinton Prairie has cancelled school Friday, October 16. Unfortunately for the Clinton Prairie athletes, that means all athletic events on Friday have been cancelled too. Even though the Gopher volleyball team is missing just one player, they had to cancel their match Thursday. The football team will miss their last game of the regular season against a number one or two ranked (depending on which poll you look at) Central Catholic team that was scheduled for Friday.

You can look at this cancelled football game from two angles: a negative one or a positive one. The negative side: for senior players on both the Clinton Prairie and Central Catholic squads, they are missing their last regular season football game EVER in high school. Kind of a bummer. The positive side: (Knight’s head coach Kevin O’Shea pointed this out) it gives both teams a chance to heal up. At this point in the season, many players are banged up and hurt to some extent. A Friday night off will give these players some extra time to regroup and heal before heading into the most important part of the season, post-season.

Now they just have to stay away from the sick kids at school.

The last wave of more substantial rainfall is currently in east-central Illinois, moving east & northeastward.

This heavier rain will affect the WLFI area 4-7 p.m.  After that, other than some patches of drizzle, I believe the games will be dry, but a wet, muddy mess.

Our eastern counties of Miami, Howard, Tipton, Fulton & eastern Clinton have the best potential of any rain lingering a bit past 7 p.m.

Temperatures will run 48-55 with a north-northwest wind picking up.  So, hot chocolate, a jacket/sweater, umbrella will be staples this evening.

I like a lot of things about my job, but I think my favorite is traveling to cover games. It’s a challenge. It also puts you in an unfamiliar situation/city and you have to troubleshoot equipment at times. However, when it makes the air it looks good and I get great satisfaction from covering Purdue on the road. It’s about 8 hours to Minnesota. I’m making the road trip, we should have a report on Saturday.

According to this week’s Indiana Football Coaches Association Poll, Central Catholic has lost the top spot to Pioneer.  Pioneer moves into the number one spot.  Both teams received 5 first place votes, but Pioneer got 2 more total points than CC to move them into first.  I have two thoughts.  First, it’s just a poll and it doesn’t really matter that much, but I am personally surprised.  I am not saying I don’t think Pioneer is good.  I think Pioneer is a tremendous football team and Bryce Kiser may be the best player in our area, but what has CC done to knock them out of the top spot?  They’ve essentially ‘blown out’ every opponent.  I’m not saying Pioneer isn’t worthy of #1, but has CC done enough to move themselves out of the number one spot?  I mean, they gave up their first touchdown of the season last week.

The answer:  This discussion will be resolved in Sectionals.

One final note:  The Associated Press has Central Catholic first again this week.