Ryan Cornelsen watched Kickapoo’s season-opening film this week, and the final score didn’t tell him much. The Chiefs lost 14-10 to Joplin, but Republic’s head coach came away convinced Friday’s home opener will be a serious test.
“Watching the Joplin game, it could have went either way,” Cornelsen said on this week’s REPMO Football Show. “Those are two equal teams. Both of them are really big … basically in all positions, it’s not just up front. Kickapoo had a couple of late turnovers that probably cost them the game. I thought they played extremely hard.”
Republic (1-0) hosts Kickapoo (0-1) Friday at 7 p.m. at Tiger Stadium.
The Chiefs led Joplin 10-7 late in the third quarter behind quarterback Turner Hale’s fourth-and-inches touchdown keeper and a Wyatt Slavens-Lewis field goal, before a fourth-quarter Joplin touchdown and two late interceptions swung the game. It was Joplin’s eighth straight win in the series.
“You look at years past, that game probably wasn’t as close as it was (this season). They’re right there with Joplin,” he said. “To me, they put themselves right in the pack with everybody else in the conference.”
Kickapoo has a new head coach in Bill Voorhis, who arrived from Fair Grove, and Friday is a homecoming for him. Voorhis is a Republic graduate who played for the Tigers under Kuper Kreul, now an assistant on Republic’s staff.
Game page →Cornelsen said the coaching change is obvious when watching film.
“Anytime you get a new coach, you can tell they’ve got some excitement in there. You can tell they’re believing in their system,” he said. “I was shocked with the amount of offense they had in. We saw multiple formations and we saw multiple motions. They have a lot of jet sweeps, things that make you cover the whole field, whether it’s a pass outside, or they’ll run ISO right at you. That’s just a different style than what they’ve ever been.”
To prepare, Republic’s staff went back and studied Voorhis’s Fair Grove tape alongside the Joplin game. The Chiefs’ line features 6-foot-6 senior Zachary Humiston and 6-foot-5 senior Carter McCormick.
“Really, to me, that’s going to be the issue — their size,” Cornelsen said. “Their outside linebackers, their edge guys, are a lot bigger than what we’ve seen week one — big, strong kids. We’ve got to keep our pad level low. We’ve got to be able to move some guys that are really big, and not just big in the middle, but the linebackers at the edges.”
Republic opened the season with a 35-0 shutout at Lebanon, piling up a 28-0 lead by the second quarter and outgaining the Yellowjackets 339-37, with more than 300 of those yards on the ground and 17 first downs. Nolan Lashley ran for four touchdowns in his first varsity start at running back, Baelor Cutbirth forced a fumble that swung momentum right back after a Republic turnover, and Uriah Drew led Republic with five tackles and two sacks.
Now the Tigers bring it home for the first time this season.
“It’ll be a great matchup, being our home opener,” Cornelsen said. “There’ll be a lot of excitement in the air.”
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