With just four games remaining in the MAIS regular season the Glenbrook Apaches are beginning to play the way Apache fans are accustomed.
In the past few weeks head coach Chris Norton made the decision to lean on a more run-oriented attack and the move has paid off in wins.
The switch came at the right time for an Apache team that was struggling to score points early in the season.
“We’ve certainly come a long way,” Norton said. “We started off slow and I think part of it had to do with the coaching change and not having a lot of time together.
But with that said we know who we are now as a football team and we’re a lot better than the team that got on the bus to go to MRA week one.”
The team the Apaches will face this week will bring back memories of MRA as far as personnel. ACCS is 4-1 this season fresh off a 46-14 beatdown of University Academy.
“They’re going to be very, very good,” Norton said. “They care a lot about their football program, It starts with coach Jeff King.
It’s a talented team with a lot of speed and a lot of kids. They have about four or five guys who can break one on you with their speed.”
The Apaches have been hard at work in practice this week trying to prepare for that speed, but Norton knows his team won’t get a realistic look at that quickness until Friday night.
“It’s been hard for us to emulate that at practice,” Norton said. “We have some young guys that are working hard at giving us as good a look as possible.”
In order to pull off the upset, Glenbrook will have to stick to the winning formula they’ve used the past few weeks.
That is playing solid defense, tackling well, and pounding teams with a heavy dose of Clay Simonton and Caleb Wilson.
Simonton and Wilson have combined to rush for 530 yards in the past two weeks in a pair of Apache wins.
“We don’t have the burners that they do,” Norton said. “What we do have is a lot of kids we like. Kids who are going to run hard, won’t quit and give us a chance to be in it late in the game with a chance to pull it out. We like those guys and we’re ready to play.”