Salina Liberty Playbook: Back to Corpus

It’s game week once again for the Salina Liberty. After a week off, they kick off a stretch of six weeks in a row with an Arena Football One game for the team. First up: a rematch with the Corpus Christi Tritons. You can catch the game live on EvergreenNOW, with kickoff set for 8:00 p.m. ET. 

Focusing on Themselves 

The Liberty fell to the Tritons in Week 1 by a score of 40-12. They get the unique opportunity to play them back-to-back with a chance to right the ship. Losing by 28 points is a blowout or a “Butt-Whooping” as Liberty Head Coach Heron O’Neal said. He believes the game would have been much closer if they'd made fewer small errors. Now, the team gets the chance to prove that. 

When I talked to Coach O’Neal both last week and again this week, he reiterated that while the Tritons absolutely played a great game, if the Liberty focus on themselves and cleaning up mistakes both from players and coaches, they’ll be in the hunt on Friday. 

The team will be without starting running back Luis Gonzalez, who was placed on the short-term injury list this week with a nagging leg injury. Coach O’Neal expects Luis to be ready to play in the next week or two. Tracy Brooks, who has been with the Liberty since 2017, is the longest-tenured player on the team and more than capable of filling in while Gonzalez heals. 

Back to Texas 

The Liberty will head out Wednesday evening for the 13-hour bus ride to Corpus Christi to face the Tritons Friday, giving them a day to acclimate and do a final walk-through before the game. Before our weekly call ended, I asked Coach O’Neal what he wanted to see be the most different from the first game to this game. “Just simply execute better,” he said. “Some of it was what we did wrong, a lot of it was what Corpus did right.” “The main thing we’re focused on is just executing better.” 

Tune in Friday night on EvergreenNOW to watch the Liberty battle the Tritons in round two!