After no Week 1 meeting, Carroll and Northwest will resume Wichita rivalry in semis
When the coronavirus pandemic altered the City League football schedule, canceling the traditional Week 1 matchup between Bishop Carroll and Northwest, the two coaches came up with their own solution.
The two rivals were too talented not to play at some point this season, so Carroll coach Dusty Trail and Northwest coach Steve Martin joked that if they didn’t get to play this fall, then the two teams would meet at Brown Thrush Park.
That pickup game won’t be necessary. Carroll (8-2) and Northwest (9-0) will meet 7 p.m. Friday in the Class 5A semifinals with a berth in next Saturday’s state championship game on the line.
“We don’t get to meet them at Brown Thrush Park, we’ll play them at Grizzly Stadium and it will be a great game between two rivals who respect the other immensely,” Martin said.
Carroll and Northwest had played the first week of the regular season every season since 2014 until this season. The two programs have been regularly state-ranked and the outcome usually decides the City League title.
Northwest has won four of the last six regular-season meetings with four of the six games being decided by a touchdown or less.
“Coach Martin and I are good friends and we both love playing that game as the first game because it gives each other a gauge of where we’re at and where we need to get to,” Carroll coach Dusty Trail said.
Both coaches said it was strange not playing the other to start this season. And the two have had distinctly different schedules this season.
When it was announced in August that the Wichita public schools were not going to have a football season, Carroll, a private school, decided to continue with its football season and filled its scheduled with state powers from all over Kansas.
Carroll may have played the most difficult schedule in the state, as it beat Junction City (6A), St. Thomas Aquinas (5A) and Bishop Miege (4A) — three teams that are playing in state semifinals on Friday. Its two losses are to Derby, which is playing in the 6A semifinals, and to Lawrence, the No. 1-ranked, undefeated team that Derby beat last week to advance.
“It was definitely strange not playing Northwest this season, but we have played a lot of really, really good football teams,” Trail said. “It’s been a good gauge for us. I guess it all worked out in the end and it’s been a fun season for these kids playing a lot of really good competition.”
Meanwhile, Northwest was left to play the other six Wichita public schools in the regular season — competition that the Grizzlies trounced by a combined 354-30.
It wasn’t until Week 7 when Northwest was pushed (a 17-2 win over East) and last week in the state quarterfinals that it faced a deficit, which ultimately became a 26-14 win over Kapaun Mount Carmel.
“We didn’t get any pushback at all until we played East and then we played more games and we didn’t get any pushback,” Martin said. “We haven’t had anyone until Kapaun try to do a slugfest with us. We usually have that Week 1, so we had to wait until the (quarterfinals) for someone to really go toe-to-toe with us like they did. That’s why we love playing (Carroll) in Game 1.”
This is the fourth straight appearance in the state semifinals for Northwest, which is looking for its third straight trip to the 5A title game. The Grizzlies lost to Aquinas, 49-28, in 2018 and Mill Valley, 40-31, in 2019.
Carroll is looking to get back to its first state championship game since 2017, when it won the Class 5A title over Aquinas.
“It’s a huge game for the city of Wichita and for these two programs,” Martin said. “I love playing them because you’re going to see kids playing their hearts out and putting it all on the line and you’re going to see them help each other up and respect each other too. It’s such a great rivalry where two programs and two coaching staffs respect the heck out of each other. It’s what sports are all about.”
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