Heritage Hills football ready for semistate battle against longtime familiar foe

LINCOLN CITY, Ind. (WFIE) - Focusing in on IHSAA football, we have three schools competing in the semistate this weekend, meaning they have a chance to punch their tickets to state. Those would be North Posey, Gibson Southern, and Heritage Hills.

In the class 3A game, the Patriots and Titans will play each other, so hey, we’re guaranteed to cover one local school at state! Having two local teams play each other in semistate is definitely not something that’s normal, and it makes for an interesting dynamic for both teams.

Gibson Southern and Heritage Hills know each other well, as the Pocket Athletic Conference rivals play annually, and often times, in the postseason. Patriots’ head coach Todd Wilkerson’s bunch only lost to the Titans by 3, earlier this season.

“It’s a little different playing somebody at sesmistate that you’re familiar with, that you don’t really have to research a ton on, but Coach Hart does a great job over there and we know it’s going to be an outstanding game,” said Heritage Hills football head coach Todd Wilkerson. “I just looked at the last six years, and we’ve played 10 times in the last six years. I know we watch and monitor them throughout the year, kinda seeing what they’re doing. It’s an exciting opportunity for both of us. It really comes down to who’s gonna make the most plays and who’s gonna make the least mistakes.” “It’s exciting; we played them earlier in the season, it was a close game, so we’re looking forward to it. It’s exciting for both communities,” said Patriots’ senior Braydon Durham. “They can try anything this game, something that we haven’t seen, so we gotta be ready for it all. I don’t think we’ve played here since Charlestown, first round of the sectionals, so I was really hoping we’d get back, and I’m happy we did.”

Heritage Hills and Gibson Southern will kick off, Friday night, at 7:00, in Lincoln City.

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