The Grand Meadow football team will have to get past a familiar opponent as it tries to get to its second straight state nine-man football tournament this Friday at 5:30 p.m. in RCTC Stadium in Rochester.

For the third straight year, the Superlarks will take on Spring Grove with a trip to state on the line and the teams split the first two meetings. No. 3 seeded GM (9-1 overall) won its regular season matchup against the No. 1 Lions (9-1 overall) by a score of 12-7 and the Larks are coming off a big 35-6 win over No. 2 Lanesboro.

Despite that recent success, GM head coach Gary Sloan will not let his team come into the game overconfident. The Lions will be coming into the game with a lot of rest as they won by forfeit over Glenville-Emmons to open the playoffs and they beat Houston 56-6 Saturday.

“I made a big point to tell the kids that just because we did a good job against them before, doesn’t mean it will happen again,” Sloan said. “They’re very physical on offense and defense. You’ve got to meet that or they’ll push you around.”

This will be the sixth meeting between the Lions and Larks in the last three seasons so there won’t be a lot of surprises.

“We know them very well. We’ve got a few wrinkles they haven’t seen and I’m assuming they’ll have a few wrinkles that we haven’t seen,” Sloan said.

Sloan said the Larks will have to run the ball like they did last week to have success against the Lions. If GM can’t move the ball on the ground, it’s play-action passing game will have problems.

The game was initially supposed to be played in Winona at 7 p.m., but the Larks aren’t concerned with the location and time of the contest.

“I’m happy to be playing there,” Sloan said. “I’m fine with everything and we’ve played in RCTC a couple of times before.”

Follow RockyHulneADH on twitter for live updates of the game Friday night.