WOODSTOCK — Central starts its Bull Run District season off with a very familiar foe — Clarke County.

It’s been a strong rivalry for a number of years and on Friday when the Falcons make the trip to Berryville it should be another hard-fought contest between the two.

“You’re going to see the typical offense that you always see — single wing,” Central head football coach Rowdy Hoover said. “You’re going to see solid defensive play. And you’ve got to be able to get a hat on a hat and exploit those things on the field. I think we can match up well in certain situations and use it to our advantage.”

The single-wing offense can be tough to stop, and Hoover said discipline from his players is a key.

“It’s just so many moving parts,” Hoover said. “If you don’t have good discipline with your linebackers and defense of where you’re looking you can get lost. I know Clarke does a lot of pulling, so they’ll pull guards. But they’ll also false pull and try to figure out what your reads are. So once they figure out your reads and they try to run plays against your reads. So you’ve got to be disciplined and stay at home and play sound football.”

Hoover said one of the biggest challenges in playing against the single wing is being able to prepare for it during the week.

“Running the offense is tricky at times where you get your scout guys to do it,” Hoover said. “And I think that’s one of the advantages of why teams run it. But having our guys seeing it over the last four years if they played JV is definitely beneficial in knowing they’re going to lineup like this and this is what they want to do. And watching film. We watch a lot of film, so the kids have already seen a lot of what they do.”

Hoover said the Eagles pose some threats defensively as well.

“I think they bring their middle linebackers, so you definitely have to have your eyes up at the O-line position,” Hoover said. “I think (Joseph Stem) he’s probably one of their better players, him and (Grady Ferrell). They do some good things. So we’ve just got to make sure we get a body on (Ferrell) if we want to be successful.”

The Eagles (0-5) are searching for their first win of the season. Hoover said despite Clarke County’s record, he expects his team to not overlook them and take them very seriously.

“We’re only 2-3, so we’re not much better,” Hoover said. “So if you aren’t hungry for a win, I don’t know why you’re playing the sport. I’m not worried about their record. Right now, we’ve got to beat any team that we can beat and get back on the right track. We have the ability to do it. We just have to clean up mistakes.”

The Falcons (2-3) are coming off a tough 42-40 loss to Skyline, in which Central had five turnovers in the game and trailed by 21 points in the first half.

“We just have to clean stuff up,” Hoover said. “It is attention to detail. It’s the little things that we’ve been preaching and we need to continue preach and stay in focus. We had three turnovers in the first quarter. We watched all three of them. One was legitimate — they did a great job. The other two are on us of not executing, not having the right elbow up when we’re trying to make an exchange, not properly aligned. It’s the little things. We take care of the little things and big things will happen.”

One bright spot for the Falcons, who have lost three straight games, last week was the offensive play in the second half. Central had 348 yards of offense in the second half and scored 34 points.

“I thought it was like we put our foot on the gas all of a sudden, and we decided we were going to start rolling and doing things,” Hoover said. “We’ve got to play four quarters. You prep all year to try to play four quarters strong. So we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

The Falcons have had a very challenging non-district schedule. Four of their five opponents were Class 3 schools. Hoover said he feels like the non-district schedule will help his team in the Bull Run District.

“I’ve been ready for this, to get away from a very tough non-district schedule,” Hoover said. “And to be able to get into something that’s more normal, what we’ve seen. We played four new teams in our first part. So that’s seeing four new offenses. So getting back to some of the things that we know — I think it will be better for all of us.”