Jackets back in action Friday as rival Heritage Hall visits

An unexpected week off wasn’t necessarily bad news for the Kingfisher High School football team.

The Jackets return to action this week when they host Heritage Hall in a pivotal District 3A-1 matchup at 7 p.m. Friday.

If Heritage Hall, ranked either second or third in Class 3A, wins, the Chargers will lay claim to the district championship.

A Kingfisher victory would mean the Jackets are still in line to win the title heading into a Week 10 showdown at Anadarko.

The Chargers put themselves into great position with last Saturday’s 39-27 victory against Anadarko.

Heading into that matchup, Heritage Hall, the Warriors and KHS were the only unbeaten teams in the district.

Now it’s down to two.

Kingfisher’s perfect district mark wasn’t put on the line last week.

The Jackets were slated to play at Mount St. Mary, but the Rockets’ program was on quarantine protocol, forcing the cancellation.

Efforts to schedule other games for KHS were fruitless.

However, that afforded Kingfisher two things:

1. Get healthy, and,

2. Prepare for Heritage Hall for an extra week.

“Everyone is good to go,” said KHS head coach Jeff Myers on Monday.

“We took that week to get some much-needed rest and healing for some of our guys, so we’re pretty healthy going into this week.”

Knowing an opponent at the end of the week was unlikely, Kingfisher got to work on Heritage Hall.

That became even more beneficial as inclement weather moved in early this week.

“We worked on them (Heritage Hall) last week, so we were ahead of schedule,” Myers said.

The bad weather Monday and Tuesday forced the team to practice in the APB.

“We went over some of our team stuff on both sides of the ball and worked on special teams,” Myers said. “It’s not ideal to be in the gym, but that’s where working ahead last week really helped us.”

The Jackets enter the week 5-2 overall and 3-0 in the district.

Last week’s cancellation was the second lost district contest for the Jackets.

The other was Oct. 2 when KHS was supposed to host Douglass.

The Jackets are assured of a playoff spot because - well, everyone is.

The OSSAA moved last week to adopt a policy that allows all teams to qualify for the playoffs in 2020 only.

That measure was adopted due to the uneven schedules being played by teams in each district.

That move also extended the playoffs by one week.

Playoff teams will now match up with opposing districts for the first two weeks of the playoffs (Example: District 3A-1 matches up with 3A-2 in the first round; this year, it will be the first two rounds).

That doesn’t eliminate the importance of the next two weeks.

Part of the expanded playoffs and uneven district schedules by the OSSAA was implementing a ranking system for some districts.

This week is the first of the three weeks of that system.

Wins in one or both of the games can equate into a higher ranking, therefore into home playoff games.

“You always want to be at home, so anything you can do to have more games here is a bonus.”