Two weeks of practice and preparation will culminate on the field Friday night when the Huskies host one of the best 1A football programs in the state.

For the second year in the row, the Huskies will battle the Mount Airy Bears in the second game of the year for the purple and silver.

Mt. Airy has started off the 2010 campaign with two losses, the first time that has happened in over six years. While the Bears are 0-2, those two losses came to Starmount, a team chosen by several media and coaches polls as the favorite to win the Mountain Valley 1A/2A Conference, and Thomasville, who made it to the 2A Western Regional semi-finals last year before falling to Lexington.

While the Huskies may not have the same type of resume` as the teams the Bears have faced this season, Ashe always plays well in front of the home crowd, and will hope to give the Bears all they can handle.

The Huskies enter this game with an 0-1 record, following the defeat at Watauga and an off week, giving the squad plenty of practice time to prepare for the 1A juggernaut Mt. Airy.

Ashe will be trying to get the ground game off to a good start this week with leading rusher Wesley Moore at fullback, and a tailback tandem of Joe Weaver and Kole Goss. To do that, the offensive line must improve its play from the first game of the season.

The Husky defense will be key to this game as one of the goals will be to limit the big plays by the opposition. In the Watauga game, the Huskies were gashed with big offensive plays by the Pioneers, including a 69-yard touchdown run and an 81-yard touchdown pass.

Quarterback Ben Hinson, who gets the job down both with his feet and his arm, will lead Mt. Airy into this battle with the Huskies. Hinson is third on the team in rushing with 88 yards through two games, and is coming off of a game against 2A power Thomasville where he threw for 149 yards and a touchdown.

On the ground for the Bears, Demetrius Rucker will be the featured back. Even though the Mt. Airy ground attack has been slowed through the first two games, the Bears will continue to run the football and try to open up that Husky defense.

Defensively, the Bears have struggled stopping the running game. Last week, Thomasville tailback Quin Riley ran for 178 yards on just 13 carries, an average of over 13 yards per carry. The Huskies will look to exploit those holes in the Mt. Airy defense and will try to get the ground game going after the struggles against Watauga.

The home opener for the Huskies will kickoff at 7:30 p.m. Live play-by-play coverage can be heard locally on 580 WKSK. See Tuesday’s edition of the Jefferson Post for a complete recap.