Wildcats halfway home

CLOVIS — The Clovis High football team will look to stay undefeated in District 2/5-6A this Friday when visiting Eldorado at Albuquerque’s Wilson Stadium.

Clovis will take a 2-0 district record, 5-3 overall, into the 7 p.m. game against the Eagles (4-3, 0-1). The stakes are huge, as each team is vying for state playoff positioning. And the Wildcats will be trying to win that huge game somewhere they haven’t won yet this year — anywhere not named Leon Williams Stadium.

Clovis is 0-3 on the road this season.

“So obviously we’re not doing something right,” Wildcats head coach Cal Fullerton said before Tuesday afternoon’s practice. “We’re going to have to prepare our kids a little better for the trip and maybe do something a little different when we get to the stadium. Obviously, whatever we’ve done the last three games on the road we haven’t done right or been able to come out with a victory. So we’re going to have to do something a little bit different, whether it’s showing up a little bit earlier or ... I don’t know. We’ve got to be focused when we get off the bus, for sure.”

“We’ve just got to go up there and play hard,” Clovis senior receiver/defensive back Malik Phillips said after last Friday’s 44-9 home win over Manzano. “Every time we go on the road, we lose. We’ve lost every road game, so hopefully we can go up there and play hard, and win it.”

It would be the Wildcats’ first road victory since Oct. 5 of last year at Sandia. They will try to earn it knowing that junior starting quarterback Chance Harris is available to see his first action since suffering an ankle injury at Lubbock Cooper on Sept. 27. How much action Harris sees this weekend is still undetermined.

“He’s going to be limited during practice,” Fullerton said. “I don’t know if he’ll be an emergency back-up; we’ll just kind of wait and see. Today’s his first day to actually get to practice, so we’ll wait and see how he gets around on it, how sore he is (Wednesday). He’s got to get back into practice shape as well because he’s missed two weeks.”

Senior quarterback Devin Gillespie has performed admirably in Harris’ absence, throwing two touchdown passes in an abbreviated 50-point win over Sandia on Oct. 4, and three more against Manzano last Friday. So the Wildcats won’t worry at all if Gillespie gets a good amount of snaps this weekend.

There’s also Phillips, coming off a nine-catch, two-touchdown game against Manzano that also included a pair of two-point conversion catches. A week prior against Sandia, Phillips had a touchdown reception, a 66-yard punt return for a touchdown, and a two-point conversion catch.

And there’s junior running back Jeston Webskowski, who just torched Manzano for 224 yards, three touchdowns and a pair of two-point conversion runs after torching Sandia for 173 yards, four touchdowns and two conversion runs in just one half a week earlier.

Any Eldorado players returning from last year’s game against the Wildcats should well remember Webskowski, but not for running the ball. Webskowski snared two interceptions in the game at Leon Williams Stadium, helping Clovis annihilate the Eagles 47-0.

“Last year I knew I had to have a pretty good game,” Webskowski said before Tuesday’s practice. “I was playing manned up on one of their really good players. I think this year I need to come out and have another really good game, but on the offensive side of the ball.”

Eldorado has been so-so this season, as its 4-3 record would indicate. The Eagles have scored no less than 28 points in their victories, and as many as 55 at Del Norte on Sept. 27. In their losses they’ve surrendered no less than 38, and as much as 63 at Cleveland on Sept. 6.

The Eagles’ district debut last week at La Cueva went the lead-balloon route, ending in a 38-13 loss to the defending state champions.

Still, Fullerton expects a tough opponent when the Wildcats head upstate on Friday.

“Year in and year out, Eldorado’s always good. They’ve always got good kids,” Fullerton said. “We’re going to have to play really, really well to come out with the victory Friday.”

Fullerton expects Eldorado to be as hungry as Clovis.

“They probably feel that La Cueva is the leading candidate for the district championship, and they think that if they can beat us that they can get second place in district, and probably get a home football game in the playoffs,” Fullerton said. “That’s what we’re fighting for right now. This week we need to practice really good and go up there and take care of business, so hopefully we can get a home football game (in the playoffs) and set up a really big game in that (Nov. 1) season finale against La Cueva.”