“They’re excited,” Hefner noted. “And you can tell by how they’ve been locked in at practice. We’ve been going through the game plan and their focus is right where it should be. Hopefully, we’ll have a couple more good practices and be ready to go.”

Mt. Zion and Effingham have developed a nice rivalry the past few years. Recently, the Apollo Conference championship has come down to one of these schools.

And Friday night will be no exception.

“They are very good and have a lot of experience, especially at their skill positions,” Hefner explained. “Their quarterback (Ashton Summers) is a multi-year starter and is an accurate passer. Their tight end (Drew London) is headed to Murray State and their wide receiver (Christian Keyhea) might be a Division I talent. They have the best collection of skilled kids we’ve seen. They are all home run threats.

“They like to play out of the spread and do a good job of making you have to defend them in space,” Hefner added. “They are fairly young up front with just one senior in their offensive line. They also start two juniors and two sophomores.”

Hefner is fortunate to have an experienced defensive group that is able to make changes and adapt to their opponents week-to-week.

“This group has always been able to handle changes real well and they’ll need to do that Friday night,” the coach said. “We have to keep the ball in front us and we have to limit their big plays. And we need to put pressure on their quarterback. Mt. Zion definitely presents some challenges.”

Defensively, the Braves look a lot like the Hearts, Hefner pointed out.

“They run similar schemes,” he said. “But I’m sure they’ll have a couple new wrinkles we’ll have to adjust to.”

When the Hearts have the football, Hefner said it would be important “to control the football and run some clock. We’ll also need to finish drives when we get a chance and we can’t turn the ball over.”

The Hearts will enter Friday night’s contest healthy. Because last week’s game was cancelled, EHS had a chance for a couple players to heal.

“We did have a controlled scrimmage last Friday night, which went well,” Hefner said. “I then gave them the weekend off. So we should be fresh and ready to go this week.”

The Senior Night recognition is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. and kickoff is slated for 7 p.m.