The Gilmer High School Bobcats football team will host the Region 7-A-AAAA championship game on Friday, November 8th. The game will be a rematch between the Dalton Catamounts, who blew out the Bobcats 31-0 at Dalton earlier this year. The loss was the only blemish for Gilmer, en route to an 8-1 record.FYN Sports recently reached out to Matt Land, head coach of the Catamounts, to garner his feelings about the rematch for the Region Championship. He in turn, spoke openly and honestly about the upcoming championship game.

In the first game, the Bobcats accrued 11 penalties for 103 yards, conversely Dalton was flagged twice for 10 yards. Land pointed out that earlier in the season teams accrue more penalties than later, due to teams becoming better over the season.

“There’s always more penalties in the first one or two games.”

He also pointed out that just like he has worked throughout the year on keeping penalties to a minimum for his team, he expects that Gilmer head coach, Wesley Tankersley, has done the same. He also pointed out that he often tells his team “to play hard between the whistle,” and he knows that some penalties are going to happen “as a result of playing hard.”

The first match up featured saw the Catamounts win the turnover battle. Coach Land said that turnovers were “the life blood of our team,” and that the entire coaching staff constantly preaches to force fumbles and pick off passes whenever possible.

“We live off having two or three turnovers a game.”

He also said that when facing a team like Gilmer that has a running offense with few pass attempts, results in “drastically reducing the opportunities for takeaways”, and means that his defenders often must go for strips of opposing runners.

Despite winning the head to head match up this year with Gilmer this year the Catamounts will travel to Gilmer due to a rotating schedule for the “play in game” that features the North and South teams of Regions hosting on a year to year basis.

Land spoke about how this game being the sixth matchup between the two teams in the last four years, combined with having a host of local rivalry games, has helped to prepare his team for facing a hostile crowd.

“Our guys are used to being in that (hostile) environment,” and, “we kind of expect that.”

The fact that Dalton one the first meeting of 2013 handily has not given Land and his team cause to expect another blowout victory of the Bobcats, in fact they, “expect to see a different team in Gilmer.”

Land said,

“You don’t take anything for granted. The first game in no way correlates to this one.”

He was extremely complimentary of the job that Tankersley has done in leading his team to five consecutive victories since the loss to Dalton, and he expects the game to be a hard fought victory for whomever comes out the victor.