Prep Football: Eagles host first playoff football game since 1996

It was a year when the Olympics were held in Atlanta, The No. 1 song in the country was "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, Independence Day debuted in theaters, the Cowboys beat the Steelers 27-17 in Super Bowl XXX and Kentucky knocked off Syracuse 76-67 in the Final Four.

The year was 1996 and it was also the last year Eldorado hosted a home playoff game at Boz Adams Field.

Looking to the present, the Eagles are pumped and primed to play host to Athens at 2 p.m. Saturday at the EHS Sports Complex.

For Eldorado head coach Brandon Hampton, it's been a long time coming and he feels the energy and enthusiasm around Eldorado has never been better.

"Going back to our Week 8 win (at Johnston City), any time you can win when you're down by two scores with less than seven minutes to go and punch one in with .5, the community really rallies behind a special win like that.

"And having the conference championship game at our place - the fans, the town - everybody was behind our kids. It was an entertaining game, if you were fan, you got your money's worth, on both sides there. So I just think that momentum, and that positive energy just keeps building and going and being able to play at home this week, I think we can capture that same passion and energy from our fans and go out and play well."

Eldorado, who went a perfect 9-0 in Black Diamond Conference play, will host an Athens ball club that played in the same conference, the Sangamo Conference, as Eldorado's Homecoming opponent in Riverton. The Warriors went 5-4 and finished fourth, scoring 289 points and allowing 258.

Eldorado topped all teams in the BDC on both offense and defense, scoring 402 and giving up just 107.

In hindsight, one of the reasons Hampton scheduled Riverton for Homecoming was to give his team a taste of what a postseason game might feel like. He's hoping to be proven right Saturday.

"I wanted our kids to get the feel of playing at home on a Saturday, a foreign opponent, a playoff kind of atmosphere and that's one of the reasons we pulled the trigger on that game and got it down here so our kids could get used to playing a game here. It had a playoff type atmosphere that day, it was a bit cooler. I think that'll benefit us well. We've had two Saturday games, which was late in the season, like at Riverton. It's good to have it like that."

That being said, Hampton noted how Athens appears to be a more physical team than Riverton.

"They really get off the ball on the offensive line well," he said. "They have two or three backs that run hard. They were running a similar style offense that Riverton was, in the last three weeks they've kind of gone away from that - a little more rough, heavy oriented - and they've had some success doing that."

Hampton compared the Warriors to Johnston City and Chester in terms of offensive schemes and looks to use defense as a rally cry.

"Early in the year they were using four and five wide receiver sets. Now they're doing that about 15 to 20 percent of the time. The rest of the time they look like Johnston City or Chester, where they're trying to use some motion and run the football, so I think the carryover effect for us, from the teams we played Week 8 and Week 9, defensively, really prepares you for this opponent.

"The other thing is, we've lucked out, and (Carmi-White County) head coach (Curt) Simon and I used to talk about it all the time, when you get in the postseason you really rely on your Weeks 7, 8, 9 to gauge whether you're getting better, and the type of opponents you're playing. I feel like we're playing three teams that were all into the postseason - in Fairfield, Johnston City and Chester - so I feel like the level of competition that we've played has been high and our kids continued to get better and we've been extremely physical in those last three contests."

Coming into the game, Eldorado has 3,645 yards and more than 75 percent of that comes on the ground, where the Eagles have rushed for 3,005 yards on 358 carries and 44 touchdowns.

Payton Price, who has made a case for MVP in the BDC and possibly the top player in southern Illinois this year, despite being a junior, has 1,332 yards on 104 carries and 16 touchdowns.

Price is complimented by a flock of Eagles like Tre Vessel (103-582, 15 TD), Drew Woolcott (62-544, 5 TD), Alex Molinarolo (30-155, 4 TD) and Jacob Traxler (11-82).

"Our recipe for success here is something that has been around football for a long time," Hampton explained. "What we're wanting to do is we're wanting to run the football and we're wanting to do a good job of stopping the run. Anytime you're able to do those two things, it doesn't matter what level you coach, you give yourself an opportunity.

"We've doubled the opponent's ability to run the football on us. We have over 3,000 they have a little less than 1,400 I believe. The ability for us to run the ball and stop the run has been real key for us. Another one I go back to has been the way we've taken care of the football on offense and the way we've taken it away from people. We're plus 33 in the turnover battle which is unheard of when you think back to last week's game."

Michael Dann covers prep and college sports for the Harrisburg Daily Register. Follow him on Twitter: @spydieshooter.