Huskies survive Newman, set up showdown

     Don’t tell Chase Sudol and his Nashua-Plainfield football players that this Friday’s home game is just another regular season game.     No sir, Friday’s tilt against West Hancock is a playoff game.     The winner makes the Class A state playoffs; the loser packs up the equipment and waits for 2018.     “It’s all we wanted, to be playing a game that mattered right now,” Sudol said after his team held off Mason City Newman 29-27 last Friday. “And it doesn’t get much bigger than this.”     Both the Huskies and West Hancock are 5-1 in Class A, District 3 play. Both have lost agonizingly close games to district champion St. Ansgar. Both don’t want their seasons to end.     The Huskies, though, almost didn’t get to this point because Newman gave Nashua-Plainfield all it could handle last week.     For the second straight game, the Huskies had to rally from a halftime deficit, but if Sudol has learned one thing about the 2017 Huskies, they are a resilient bunch.
     More on the story may be found in the Oct. 19 Reporter.