RED SPRINGS — St. Pauls coach Mike Setzer doesn’t want his Bulldogs team to think of Friday’s game against Red Springs as a rivalry game.
This is not because he thinks the game is not important. It’s because he thinks it’s very important.
Rivalry or not, the in-county foes will meet for the 72nd time at 7 p.m. Friday as the Red Devils host the Southeastern Athletic Conference matchup.
“The last couple of year’s we’ve been erasing that circle (on the calendar), so I think that’s why we’ve kind of progressed even better,” Setzer said. “We’ve taken that rivalry thing out between us; we don’t look at this game like a rivalry. We just try to go about it as the next game. In our program, we know that every game is so important. This game’s a conference game and it’s important. Sometimes when people take games for what they’re not, then you kind of lose focus on what’s the most important thing, and our most important thing right now is winning the next game.”