Abernathy coach Tony Truelove always loves a good game of Battleship.

The strategy, anticipation and everything involved with the board game makes it one of his favorites. Now he may be able to use the same startegy on the field as well.

“Two boats sitting there ready to fire at one another,” he said. “I think in a lot of ways that is exactly what this new distict is like. Boats ready to fire on each other.”

The 2008 season brings about new things for every team in any given sport. The slates are wiped clean and everyone begins with the same record. For the eight teams realigned to make up the new District 3-2A, it means one more thing.
Rivalry.

Ask coaches and they will say the district is looking so tough that it doesn’t matter who you might face in any given week.

“We don’t really tend to look at it as a rivalry necessarily,” Idalou coach Johnny Taylor said. “We look at everybody about the same. We take them all pretty seriously. I think all the kids want to beat each one of them about as bad as the next team.”

Former district foes will have the chance to play each other again this season, with many teams showing success from their 2007 campaigns. Five teams — Idalou, Post, Denver City, Littlefield and Abernathy — made the postseason. Slaton, Roosevelt and Shallowater will help make an interesting mix of teams vying for the limited spots out of the district.

The most recent realignment with the same teams was in 2004, when seven of the eight schools were in District 5-2A (Littlefield was in District 2-3A). Idalou finished 6-1 in district play and won the district title, suffering its only loss to Post, which finished third that year. Abernathy was right with the Wildcats before losing 20-3 to Idalou in the final game of the season.

“It’s almost like it hasn’t been a rivalry the way we have played,” said Truelove, who is in his sixth season with the Antelopes. “They’ve beat us twice in the regular season the last two years and eliminated us from the playoffs last season.”

The two squads met in the first round of the 2007 Region I Division II playoffs as the Wildcats won 26-9.

The 2005 season is a reminder of the six straight seasons without a district title for Abernathy, although it has continued to make the postseason. Many of the seniors on the different squads were around for their freshman year in 2005 and could be looking to square up on some teams.
Abernathy and Idalou will meet in the second-to-last game of the regular season on Halloween.
Roughly 24 miles separate Post and Slaton — two teams that look to bring themselves into the mix of district teams looking to advance to the postseason.

Since Slaton dropped down to 2A in 2004, the two schools have gone back and forth into the postseason but the game between the schools has not always reflected that.

Post is 15-15 over the last three years while Slaton is 18-12. The Antelopes have gone on to the postseason twice, Slaton once.

After coming to Slaton in 2007, coach Grady Benton said anyone within the 24 miles that separates the two schools knows what the game means.

“I think it’s been like that ever since we started this rivalry way back when. A lot of our community members sensed that after coming here,” he said. “You could always tell the difference when Post was in town or that week when old players would start talking about the games from 15 or 20 years ago.”

Post won last year’s contest 15-7, keeping the Tigers out of the postseason after they finished second and made it to the bi-district round of the state playoffs in 2006.

Benton said because kids come in and out of the schools all the time it’s not them who seem to feel the rivalry as much.

“It’s not so much the kids — they want to beat anybody,” he said. “A lot of discussion on the rivalry and the game comes from the people in the community who have been here awhile. You just know when people come up and tell you, ‘Hey coach, by the way, Post is this weekend.’”
The Tigers and Antelopes will take the field in Slaton on Halloween.

Truelove said the district not only has old teams that want to win so-called rivalry games but teams who want to beat any team to try and survive the season for one more week.
And it will be tough.

“In this district there are no weak sisters,” Truelove said. Some of them have had greater success in year’s past, but everybody has high expectations right now.”