photo by: Joe Lovell

Martins Ferry’s Jacob Ball (40) carries the ball during a game from earlier this season. The Purple Riders welcome Windber Area, Pa., to town Friday night.

MARTINS FERRY – Talk about a two-minute drill. Martins Ferry will have a little more time than that, but not much, to prepare for their new week 5 opponent.

According to head coach Justin Kropka, Martins Ferry officials received a telephone call from representatives of Brownville, Pa., High School around 4:30 Wednesday afternoon, informing them that they were not coming for Friday night’s scheduled game on the artificial surface at the Dave Bruney Football Complex inside Purple Rider Stadium.

Due to some quick work by Kropka and various school officials, the Purple Riders (2-2) were able to secure a game against Windber Area (4-1) which hails from the Johnstown, Pa., area.

Kickoff is set for 7 o’clock.

“We know very little, if anything about them,” Kropka said in a telephone call Wednesday night. “We had already finished practice (Wednesday), so the kids had left and didn’t even know of the change.

“We’re (our staff) is working right now on obtaining as much information on them as we can in a short period of time,” Kropka noted.

The Ramblers have wins over Glendale (38-20), Curwensville (36-22), Meyersdale (24-23) and North Star (27-19), with their loss coming in week 3 to TMHS (13-12).

Martins Ferry owns wins over Malvern (35-6) and Lucas (34-15). Its losses have come at Independence (35-14) and at home to Edison (48-20). The win over now-defunct Expression Prep Academy (55-0) doesn’t count in the OHSAA ratings.

“We knew it would take us a little while to find our identity on offense after graduating three guys who, basically, touched the ball on nearly every play for three years,” Kropka stressed. “We’re still trying to find out some things, but I think we’ve got a good feel for what we want to do.

“Going to Independence, they are as good of a team that we will play this season no matter how far we go, it was going to be rough, and we knew that, but I was disappointed in the fact that I thought they beat us twice because we came out against Edison and laid an egg,” he admitted. “You can’t fumble six times in a game and expect to win, especially when you lose five of them.

“I felt like, last week, we had another long road trip to Lucas. I felt like a lot of people underestimated them because they were a good team. We got down early, but after halftime we finally found out who we were on both sides of the ball. That was a nice springboard to our second half of the season because now we know who we are. The coaches know who we are and our players know who they are.”

Sparking the come-from-behind victory was a perfectly timed and executed onside kick.

“That is something that we work on every year. We, as coaches, see how some teams align and we thought we had a good chance at recovering it. We thought it was something that we could go to if needed, and we definitely needed it at that point in the game. Once we got our confidence, we started rolling. We lost our confidence at Independence and against Edison, but I think we got it back last week.”

The Purple Riders are led by sophomore tailback Walkquem Cox (81-760-8tds) and junior quarterback Colby Kropka. He has run for 179 yards and three touchdowns on 18 carries and passed for 689 yards and six TDs on 45 of 70 accuracy. He has been picked off three times. His favorite targets are Maurice Barnett (13-201-td), Luca Shane (12-201-2tds) and Elijah Roby (11-182-td).