By John Kemmeter

The Stevens Point Area Senior High School (SPASH), Amherst High School and Rosholt High School football teams will each host Homecoming Games Friday, Sept. 29, in Week 7 of the high school football season.

Junior running back Zach Bunders and the Almond-Bancroft High School football team will travel to play at Tri-County at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 29.
(John Kemmeter photo)

Top-ranked Amherst (5-1, 4-0) is set to host Pacelli Catholic High School (4-2, 2-2) at 7 p.m. Friday, SPASH (2-4, 1-4) will play D.C. Everest (2-3, 2-3) at 7 p.m. Friday at Community Stadium at Goerke Field, Almond-Bancroft (5-1, 2-1) is at Tri-County (2-4, 1-2) at 7 p.m., and Rosholt (1-5, 1-3) will host Port Edwards (0-6) in an 8-man game at 7 p.m. Friday.

Amherst and Pacelli

Top-ranked and back-to-back defending WIAA Division 5 State Champion Amherst clinched a playoff berth last week with a 62-0 win at home over Manawa, and will be back home Friday night to host Pacelli, which is looking to bounce back from a 47-14 Homecoming loss to Division 6 fifth-ranked Iola-Scandinavia (5-1, 3-1) last week.

“The kids are excited,” said Amherst football head coach Mark Lusic. “Homecoming week is always a different week in school, which I think is good to have.

“But it’s great rivalry, Pacelli’s playing pretty well, they’re fighting for a playoff spot, we’ve got ours clinched, and now we’re chasing conference and to stay on top and to keep being successful here,” he said. “We should have a pretty big crowd on Friday night, and the cool part is a lot of these kids know each other, just from living so close and playing baseball and basketball and football all these years against each other, and even with each other even sometimes. So, it’ll be a fun atmosphere.”

“It will be another good test for us, to see where we are,” said Pacelli football head coach Drew Nelson. “As long as the kids come in focused, mentally ready, we’ll see what we can do.

“Like I told the kids, I’m going to give credit where credit’s due, and Amherst is a good team,” he said. “There’s a reason why they’ve been Conference Champs and State Champs for a couple of years here, but we’ve got to build our program up and worry about what we’re doing, and we can’t always look at how good another team is, we just have to worry about ourselves.”

Senior running back Matthew Boettcher and the Rosholt High School football team will face Port Edwards in an 8-man football game for Homecoming Friday, Sept. 29.
(John Kemmeter photo)

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