Rivalry continues Friday for Bobcats, Tigers

It’s that time of year again for the Berryville Bobcats and the Green Forest Tigers. It doesn’t matter now what either team has done in its first nine games of the season. The only thing that matters is what happens in the Carroll County Super Bowl.

This year’s edition of the annual county rivalry will be played Friday night, Nov. 3, at Green Forest’s Tiger Stadium. The winner will earn county bragging rights for the next year and enter the offseason on a good note.

Friday night’s winner will earn its fourth victory of the season. Green Forest hasn’t had a four-win season since 2013, while Berryville won four games in 2018 for the first time since 2006.

“It’s huge,” Green Forest coach Greg Tibbitt said. “We haven’t won four games since 2013. We’ve talked about that 10-year drought. We talked about 21 years since we beat Huntsville (before last week’s 14-6 Green Forest victory). Like I said, it’s not where we want to be. We want to be a consistent playoff team, but we have taken a big step this year and hopefully we can build on it. Four wins would be a huge step to start building on moving forward.”

First-year Berryville coach Macklin Chermak will experience his first taste of the rivalry with Green Forest. An added element this year is Chermak’s friendship with Tibbitt. The two worked together for a while as assistant coaches at Mena and have kept in touch this season.

“We talk every once in a while,” Tibbitt said. “We talked for a long time last night. Sometimes it’s not easy to stay in touch because he’s busy and we’re busy but we do talk quite a bit.”

When Tibbitt arrived in Green Forest before the 2019 season, he installed a Spread offense that emphasized the passing game. But with the presence of junior running back Ridge Gordon-Swofford, Tibbitt and the Tigers have shifted gears this season, stressing a power running game in an effort to control the ball and ease the load on a young defense.

“Coach Tibbitt has done a good job with what he’s got over there,” Chermak said. “He’s gone old-school with pro-I and splitback and running dive and sweep and all that stuff. He’s really gone back to like the old Nebraska and Wisconsin Badgers in the ’80s and had some success with it. They’ve moved the ball against some very good teams in the conference. Their defense is real young. They’ve struggled a little bit on defense but coach Tibbitt has done a great job with his offense moving the ball, controlling the ball, controlling the clock, all that stuff, so that’s going to be a big challenge for us.”

Gordon- Swofford gives the Tigers a powerful running threat and also catches the ball well out of the backfield. Chermak said he’ll present a challenge for the Berryville defense.

“He’s a bruiser for sure,” Chermak said. “He’ll get downhill and he’ll run through tackles. He’ll have three or four guys on him sometimes, still moving his feet.”

Both teams have some injury concerns entering Friday’s game. Berryville’s starting quarterback, junior Decimus Ruiz, missed last Friday’s loss to Lincoln with a thigh bruise and his status is uncertain this week. Sophomore Hunter Rankin started at quarterback for Berryville last week and throws the ball well. Senior Zane Gentry also took snaps for the Bobcats against Lincoln.

Green Forest, meanwhile, was already without starting defensive backs Kasen Robinson and Justin Ayala, then lost defensive end Colton Fancher to an arm injury in last week’s win over Huntsville. All three are sophomores. Fancher’s loss could be especially significant against Berryville in a game typically decided at the line of scrimmage.

“He was having an incredible season as a sophomore,” Tibbitt said. “He was our motor on defense, for sure. I feel like a lot of times when you’re leaning on a lot of younger guys who might not physically be ready for high school — but in our situation, they’ve got to play — it starts catching up with them.”

On paper, this season’s matchup shapes up as a defensive struggle. Both the Bobcats and Tigers come in with just one conference victory, with both teams beating Huntsville for the first time in several years. Berryville hung on for a 20-12 victory over the Eagles on Oct. 20, while Green Forest beat Huntsville 14-6 last week thanks to Diego Martinez’s 51-yard interception return for a touchdown with less than two minutes remaining.

Berryville has had the advantage the past two seasons against Green Forest, winning 22-0 last season and 3-0 in 2021. The Tigers’ last victory in the series came in 2020, when they won 18-12 at Bobcat Stadium.

The teams come with identical records of 3-6 overall and 1-5 in the 4A-1. They have played eight common opponents this season, with Green Forest scoring 156 points and allowing 330 in those games. Berryville has scored 85 points and given up 315 against the teams’ common opponents.

“If you start looking at the scores, we may have played somebody better than they did and they may have played the next team better than we did,” Tibbitt said. “I’d say we’re probably pretty evenly matched.”

Chermak is expecting both teams to scratch and claw for every yard.

“This is not going to be a perimeter shootout,” he said. “It’s going to be in the trenches, fighting for no man’s land.”

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Tiger Stadium.