The Arkadelphia High School Badgers will end the season with a tough matchup against defending state champions Nashville. Nashville has been the 4A State Champions for the last three years.

Badger head coach Billy Elmore hopes his team will be up for the challenge ahead of them. “I hope the kids are mentally into it. They showed a lot of improvement Friday nigh,” he said. “I sure don’t want us to regress and go backward. We’ve got to continue to improve.”

Nashville is currently the No. 1 team in 4A this season. “We are going to approach Nashville like we would any other week. We are preparing the same. There is no more emphasis because it is Nashville. It happens to be the next game on the schedule.

“Obviously they are a good team. Maybe the kids will view that as a challenge. There is no doubt Nashville for the last three years has been viewed as the bell cow of the conference. Hopefully the kids will accept the challenge and do great things.”

Malvern proved last week that Nashville is not invincible. Malvern had a nine point lead on the Scrappers at half-time. “We’ve got to play our best, it’s going to take that to win the game. I hope we have it in us. We need to go out and see how well we can pay.”

Nashville is led by quarterback Pierre Vaughn. He threw for more than 2,500 yards last year and rushed for more than 1,500. Last week against Malvern, he had 121 yards on 15 carries. He was nine out of 18 passing for 65 yards and a touchdown. “He makes their offense go,” Elmore said.
Derrick Graham is at running back. Last week, he had 16 carries for 144 yards and four touchdowns. He also made two catches for 14 yard. Receiver Daniel Aylett had two catches for 30 yards and a touchdown last week.

Elmore said that the Scrappers also have outstanding offensive and defensive lines. “We know that is where the game is won and lost. Often they are overlooked unless they give up a sack.”
Defensively, Dylan Webb led the team in tackles last week with 11. He also had a big play for the Scrappers in the second half to put them back on top of the Leopards. He returned a punt for 72 yards and a touchdown. Braddon Wilson also is a key player on defense for the team. He had seven tackles last week against the Leopards.

It’s probably the last week of practice for most of the Badger seniors. “This time of the year has a lot of mixed emotions. For most teams you go into the last week and you don’t know it’s the last week because of the playoffs. We certainly want to and expect to get to that point. When it’s just a question of which seed.  It’s coming together just not as quick as we wanted it to,” he said.

Friday night will be Senior Night at Badger Stadium honoring the more than 20 seniors on the team. Elmore hopes that there will be some extra motivation for the seniors and their teammates to send them off with a good game. “I hope it will mean enough for them. This is their last time to play where it really means something considering some of them have been playing since third and fourth grade. For many of them it will be their last time to put on shoulder pads. Hopefully the underclassmen will want to send the seniors off with a good game.”

“I would have liked to have been around them when they were younger. I would have liked to have had more time with them and work with them as a group,” he said. A lot of seniors are the main play-makers for the Badgers. “There are some athletic players, and they have done some good things for us.”

Elmore hopes that those good things keep coming this week. “We have got to do an outstanding job of executing,” he said. “We need to slow them down. Realistically we are not going to stop them, but we need to slow them down and not be put in a situation where we have to score every time. Offensively we have to take care of the ball.

“We have the opportunity to go out and finish the year in a great way,” he said. “We have nothing to lose, we need to play like that. There is no sense in holding anything back.”

The Badgers and Scrappers kick off at 7:30 p.m. at Badger Stadium. The seniors will be recognized before the game, starting at 7 p.m.