After a tough home loss to conference rival Mendota, the Ghosts look to bounce back on Friday as they take on the Rock Falls Rockets.

The IVC Grey Ghosts varsity football team will make the long hall up to Rock Falls for another conference showdown and a chance to atone for last week’s home loss.

 This will be the first time that the Ghosts have gone on the road since their first game of the year when they beat the Monmouth Titans.

After beating Hall by one point to kick off conference play with a win two weeks ago, the Ghosts came up short against Mendota last week to fall to 1-1 within the conference.

The Ghosts defense, which had been stellar all year, had a bit of a letdown at the end of last week’s game as Mendota’s star running back Kurtis Knapp broke away for over 200 yards on the night.

One of the bright spots in last week’s loss was that IVC’s passing attack looked strong as quarterback Chris Razo passed for nearly 300 yards.

“We’ve been working on tackling and our offensive line getting on blocks better,” head coach Tim Heinz said of the team preparing to move on from the loss.

After starting out conference play 1-1, the Ghosts’ conference battle against the Rockets will be an important one for them to stay near the top of the conference.

Moving on from their homecoming loss will not be easy as the Ghosts not only face a tough conference opponent on Friday; they also face a grueling two-hour bus ride, which has been known to sometimes stiffen up players.

The Rockets have been a somewhat sporadic team over the course of this season as they have had two games where they were blown out and one where they ran away with the game.

Last week however, Rock Falls might have gotten its most impressive victory of the year as they surged back from a 14-0 deficit to beat Princeton 31-21.       

The Rockets defense seems to be one of their weaker spots, and if the Ghosts can exploit that by continuing their strong trend of big play running and good passing, then IVC should be able to put up enough points to win.

The game will be even tougher because both the Ghosts senior running backs Jake Elias and James Lauber are questionable for the game and most likely will not play.

“A lot of young guys will play with the injuries,” Heinz said. “We need to make sure we tackle better than we did against Mendota.”

 Despite Rock Falls being 3-2, they are atop the conference with Mendota, as both teams have yet to lose in conference play.

The Kewanee Boilermakers and the Princeton Tigers are sitting at the bottom of the conference, each without a conference win, and IVC is currently in the middle with Hall.

 The game is 7:30 p.m. Friday at Rock Falls.