After nine years competing as district opponents, the Pella Christian and Pleasantville football teams will renew their rivalry in non-district play tonight.

The Eagles and Trojans had played in the same district every year since 2016, which ended a six year stretch in which the schools didn’t play against one another. Pella Christian and Pleasantville split the first four meetings in the series from 2006-2009, but the Eagles have held the upper hand since the matchup was renewed in 2016. Pella Christian has won nine of the last ten games in the matchup, but the Trojans have recent history on their side after pulling out a hard fought 20-13 victory last September. While they have familiarity with Pella Christian from all those prior meetings, Trojans head coach Mack Jorth says they have spent a lot of time this week preparing for a difficult matchup.

“Pella Christian always is very difficult to prepare for. They’re very well coached. Their offensive scheme really tries to put you in a bind, and so we’ve really tried to prepare ourselves for that and play disciplined fundamental football and know our assignment and execute our assignment very well to try to stop what they’re doing to try to attack you. And then offensively, they really come at you. They have a lot of stunts and pressures and blitzes and we want to make sure that we’re very prepared for that because they will be good at doing it.”

Pella Christian head coach Rich Kacmarynski says that the Trojans will provide a difficult challenge for his squad tonight, and that they will need to execute the things they’ve worked on in practice to walk away with the win.

“We know we have our hands full with Pleasantville. They’ve got a nice quarterback who is a really good athlete and a good football player, but they also have a lot of guys around him that make things go. So we’re going to have to play team football in every phase, but I like our matchups and I like what we’ve done as far as preparation is concerned.” 

Coverage of Pella Christian at Pleasantville football tonight can be heard live on the KRLS2 stream at KNIAKRLS.com, beginning with pregame coverage at 6:30 pm.