The best Week 1 high school football matchups in Lane County
Local high school football fans won’t have to wait very long for some choice matchups this fall.
Game of the week: Wilsonville at Thurston – 7 p.m. Friday
The first batch of weekly coaches polls were released Tuesday with Wilsonville at No. 1 and Thurston at No. 2 in the Class 5A rankings, and those two teams will meet up Friday night for a Week 1 heavyweight showdown in Springfield.
“That was the plan, to challenge ourselves right off the bat,” Thurston coach Justin Starck said. “If things go well, great, we will take that and build on it. If we struggle then we’ll try to figure out what we need to fix and work on it during the league season.”
There’s plenty of history between the two teams, with Thurston eliminating Wilsonville from the playoffs in three consecutive seasons. The Colts beat the Wildcats in the 5A state championship game in 2018, then bounced them in the 2019 quarterfinals and 2021 semifinals.
Now the rivalry continues with a regular season nonleague matchup, and the Colts will have plenty of questions to answer after graduating 26 seniors off last year’s state runner-up squad. Oh, and then there’s the matter of No. 3 Summit waiting for a Week 2 showdown.
“We definitely want to use these first two games as a gauge of where we are,” Starck said.
Here are some other games of note this week.
South Eugene at McDaniel – 7 p.m. Thursday
Formerly known as Madison High School, McDaniel was renamed in 2021 and the Mountain Lions have a history of struggles on the football field, winning just four games since 2018.
South Eugene didn’t field a football team the last two seasons, electing to scuttle the program due to low turnout during the COVID-affected 2020 season. The Axe are back this year under former coach Chad Kessler, who is looking to rebuild the program after years of ups and downs.
South won 10 games in two seasons under former coach Kenny Koberstein, but won just eight games in the five seasons before that.
This will be a good test for two programs looking to get back on track.
Churchill at Marist – 7 p.m. Friday
Marist coach Frank Geske never shies away from scheduling tough nonleague opponents, and the Spartans will start the 2022 season playing up a class against another local team.
The Spartans went 10-3 last year and lost to Marshfield in the Class 4A championship game, and they also advanced to the finals in 2020 and semifinals in 2019. Marist lost some key components from last year’s team but the program always manages to reload.
Churchill played for a state championship in 2017 but the Lancers have struggled recently, going 5-5 last season and losing in the first round of the playoffs. Head coach AJ Robinson stepped down in the offseason and Kirk Miller was hired to take over the program.
Marist will be looking to prove itself against a bigger opponent, and Churchill will be looking to prove that last year was a fluke.
Newport at Siuslaw – 7 p.m. Friday
Siuslaw won a 3A state championship last year with one of the strongest rosters in program history, and coach Sam Johnson will be looking to build on that success.
The Vikings will open the season against a fellow coastal opponent in Newport, which has struggled in the last decade. The first coaches poll of the season has Siuslaw ranked No. 4, so the pressure will be on to continue moving the program forward after last year’s runaway success.
Follow Zack Palmer on Twitter @zpalmer_11 or email at zpalmer@registerguard.com.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: The best Lane County high school football matchups in Week 1
