Pirates host Panama in key A-8 matchup Friday

First place in the District A-8 standings will be on the line Friday night when unbeaten No. 2 Gore hosts Panama inside K.G. Horn Stadium.

Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. Gore (7-0 overall and 3-0 in the district) defeated Central (4-3, 2-2) last week and Panama (5-2, 3-0) edged Pocola (4-4, 2-2) 30-28.

Since opening the season with non-district losses to Class 2A Spiro (14-0) and Hackett, Ark. (4016) the Razorbacks have reeled off five straight wins against Wilburton (41-20), Porter (45-21), Muldrow JV (38-0), Canadian (45-6) and Pocola.

The Pirates and Razorbacks are the only A-8 teams with no district losses.

“They‚re a good football team,” Gore head coach Brandon Tyler said. “They‚re young, they‚ve only got one senior on the roster, the rest are sophomores, freshmen and juniors. They‚re playing a lot of sophomores so they kind of remind me a lot of our senior group with all the guys they‚ve got to play right now for them.

“They‚re doing a great job. They‚re 5-2 and undefeated in the district so we‚ve got to get prepared and get ready for those guys.

“Just looking at them on film their one group is going to be able to match us with their size and strength so we‚re definitely going to have our work cut out for us Friday night.”

In their last meeting in 2021 the Pirates topped Panama 56-6 in a nondistrict game.

A few of Panama‚s key players on offense are quarterback Braxton Biernacki (5foot-11, 160-pound junior), running backs Tyler Simkins (5-10, 160, soph.), Gavin McKinney (60, 205, soph.) and Caleb Brewer (5-8, 181, soph.), tight end Brody Clark (6-1, 190, soph.) and linemen Bryson Honeycutt (5-11, 220, sr.), Jay Skelton (6-0, 250, soph.) and Dalton Fox.

“Offensively they‚re going to be in a wing-T, something we haven‚t seen this year,” Tyler said. “We did get to see them a little bit at team camp but they‚re doing a great job. As young as they are they‚re just getting better and better each week and they played really well against Pocola last week.

“They‚ll run the fullback trap, buck sweep and power and then throw a bootleg off of it, which is about the only pass they‚ve got. Their tight end does a great job of getting open on that and they‚re doing a good job offensively.

“Simkins does a good job and he is probably one of their better running backs, him and McKinney, their fullback, and they‚re going to carry the load. Their tight end (Clark) is a big ole kid who‚s got great speed in the open when he catches the ball.

“One of our defensive keys is just stopping them. They want three to four yards every carry and just kind of milk the clock. We‚ve got to get stops and then get off the field on third downs to allow our offense to go to work. We can‚t let them eat up the clock and then not have any offensive possessions so our defense is going to have to get some three-and-outs and we have to turn those into points when we do get the ball.”

Some of the Razorbacks‚ standouts on defense are defensive linemen Bryson Honeycutt and Gavin McKinney (6-0, 205, soph.), linebackers Caleb Brewer, Brody Clark (6-1, 190, soph.) and Hagon Rahm (5-11, 200, soph.) and defensive backs Tyler Simkins, Nelson Liddy (5-9, 145, jr.) and Mason Cameron (6-0, 150, jr.).

“They‚re a 4-3, a 4-2-5 look on defense,” said Tyler. “The even-front defense is kind of basically what we saw against Central last week so nothing‚s going to change there. We‚ve just got to continue to improve on our end on what we‚re doing. Our offense is in, we‚re not going to add anything, so our kids know it and we‚ve just got to go line up and block it and see what happens.

“They‚re going to be one of the better teams I feel like we‚ve faced. They‚re going to match us size-wise, something we haven‚t seen. I think we‚ve been kind of bigger and stronger than most teams that we‚ve played so far but they‚re going to be able to match us on both aspects of that this week.”