Hopewell Football Looking for First 2-0 Start Since 2016

It’s another Friday night of high school football as the Hopewell Vikings will look to build upon their opening night win over Riverside.

As will be the case be with every opponent the rest of the season, the challenge will be difficult.  The Vikings will have their first road game of the season as they travel to Lawrence County to take on the New Castle Red Hurricanes.

Like with Hopewell and Coach Matt Mottes, New Castle has a new head coach in Fred Mozzocio, who returned to his alma mater after coaching 12 seasons at Neshannock.

Also, like Hopewell, New Castle is coming off a season in which they went 1-9 but Mozzocio has a track record of winning as he compiled 101 wins in 12 seasons at Neshannock.

In his first game as head coach, Mozzocio and New Castle beat General McLane, 49-47, in the opening week.

The key player for Hopewell to key on tonight is New Castle running back Kaevon Gardner, who scored four touchdowns last Friday.

The Vikings defense is going to be tested tonight as New Castle is a very athletic team with a ton of speed. The key will be finding a way to neutralize that speed and prevent the game from turning in a track meet.

An obvious way to be able to do that is to win the time of possession battle along with winning the battle of field position and forcing them to drive the length of the field.

Courtesy Hopewell Sports Nation

In order to grind the clock, the Vikings 4-headed running monster at running back, Brody Rock, Thomas Pipkins Josh Brunton and James Armstrong will need to be at their best.

In terms of New Castle’s passing attack, they throw a lot of short passes and underneath routes to take advantage of their speed, so with that in mind, it might be difficult for Hopewell’s pass rushers to get to the quarterback and for the defense backs to come up with interceptions like they did last week. A big key will be solid tackling and preventing a lot of YAC yards.

A road win tonight would be huge for this developing team as they’d start a season 2-0 for the first time since 2016. In that season, Hopewell started 5-0 with wins over Freedom, Burrell, Ellwood City, Yough and Mohawk before dropping the last five games of the season.

Stay with Hopewell Sports Nation tonight on Facebook and Twitter for game updates. Following the game, we’ll have a complete game recap.

Go Vikings!