Banged-up Bobcats head to Johnson City to close out non-district action

A banged-up Comfort High football team heads to Johnson City on Friday to take on the Eagles.

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. After Friday’s contest, the Bobcats are off a week before beginning district play on Oct. 2 at home against Poth. Comfort’s bye week on Sept. 25 can’t get here fast enough for Bobcats coach Jay Rieken, whose team is down several players with injuries.

“We’re beat up, we need our bye now,” he said. “We have 23 total kids (on the varsity), and six that are banged up, so that leaves us down to 17 players. Of the six that are hurt, all of them are border line, so we’ll decide later in the week if they’re going to play.”

Rieken said Comfort’s 34-6 loss to Ingram last Friday took its toll on the team and added to their injury situation.

“We got pretty beat up the other night, nobody is out with a serious injury, just bumps and bruises and we have a bunch of twisted ankles on our skill kids,” he said. “Our entire starting backfield is hurt and we may only have one of them healthy by Friday. We can move up kids, but we don’t want to rob the JV, so we’ll have light practices and see who we can get through practices with, but we’ve got to get healthy.”

Comfort and Johnson City are both 1-2. Comfort has defeated Brady but lost its last two to Crystal City and Ingram. The Eagles beat Falls City and also dropped their last two to Devine and Harper.

The Bobcats and Eagles usually tangle every year and are pretty evenly matched. Rieken said he would like their chances better on Friday if they were healthier.

“They’re good and they play pretty good defense, they put pressure on you,” he said. “They do a good job, and if we were healthy, it would be more evenly matched.”

Comfort couldn’t get its offense going last week and only tallied six points, a season low. Rieken gave credit to an undefeated Ingram squad for holding them to six points.

“They have a lot of speed and fly to the ball defensively,” he said. “They’re usually really good in track and have a bunch of athletes.”

Ingram’s athleticism kept Comfort’s offense from scoring.

“We didn’t do enough to keep the ball in our hands,” Rieken said. “We didn’t hold up on our blocks. We have to find some continuity on the offensive line and do a better job of getting lined up defensively.”