Holmes and Chipley meet in our game of the week at Diego's Burrito Factory

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) – Diego’s Burrito Factory High School Football Game of the Week takes us to the 1A rivalry showdown between Holmes and Chipley, the game being one of several now pushed back to Monday night due to the effects of Hurricane Helene.

Both teams are identical at 4-1. Coach Kevin Womble and the Blue Devils opened the season with a 40-23 win in Bozeman, followed by a 44-36 victory at Port St. Joe, then lost their home opener to Walton, came back with a 34-19 win at Rutherford and a 34-27 home win over Northview.

The schedule has been pretty tough so far, and again, winning four out of five is a good thing. Coach Womble says the mission is to get better every week and improve one percent every day.

“We did that, we cleaned up some things early on, you know, we were maybe a little bit deficient. Obviously, we built on running the ball and controlling the clock and we’ve done a good job of that the last few weeks. So you know, we’re always trying to get better, we’re always trying to do that, obviously, every Friday night we come back and watch the film after the game and you know there’s 15 things to fix again. But we like to think that we’re making new mistakes and not repeating the same ones. Again, we’re just trying to get better every week and we’ve found a way to get out of it recently, so I’m proud of that,” Coach Womble said.

As for coach Marcus Buchanan and his Chipley Tigers, they started the season with four straight wins over North Florida Christian, 46-0, Linden, Alabama, 24-18, Rutherford 14-7 and Vernon 18-0. Then last Thursday, they traveled to Jay and suffered their first loss, 23-13.

“Every time you lose a game, you learn more from a loss than you do from a win. And you kind of see who wants to come to work the next week. And you check the buy-in level and you find the guys that you can trust. Versus the guys that you can’t trust. And you have to figure out what 11 guys you can put on the field. We had a really good week of practice and everything is going according to plan. The storm is here and that’s the big elephant in the room so to speak. But we’re just going to continue to play our regular schedule and if that takes us off schedule, we’ll adjust. But the buy-in has been good, the practices have been good and like I said, we’re just finding the right 11 guys and those are the guys we’re going to roll with.” said Coach Buchanan.

For both teams, this is a huge rivalry game between two high schools located in different counties, but less than 10 miles apart.

“Two teams have been playing each other for a long time, you know it’s a competitive game. The schools are only a few miles apart and so this is where two communities are going head to head. It doesn’t matter, football, basketball, baseball, whatever. It’s just a rival school. You can throw records out the window. Both teams are going to be at their best. They’re going to play very hard, you know that from the beginning. It’s going to be an emotional game,” said Coach Buchanan.

“You know, when we go out there, we want to challenge ourselves by playing against a high level of opponents. You know they’re coming in with a 4-1 record, I know they lost a game last week, but they’re a good football team, you know, so that’s a really good yardstick for us. You know, obviously the kids get into the rivalry aspect, the fans get into the rivalry aspect, but for us, it’s just a chance to play a really good football team and see where we stack up,” Coach Womble said.

Including the playoffs, these two teams have met 13 times in the last 10 years, with Chipley winning nine of those 13 meetings. However, Holmes won both meetings last season, including their playoff game.

The match will take place on Monday evening at 7 p.m. at Rountree Stadium.