The Grand Meadow football team has already checked off some big accomplishments this year — it won the District, it has extended the program winning streak to 32 games, and the current senior class is now the winningest class in GM history with a record of 49-3. Still, the Superlarks want to mark off a few more accomplishments before their season ends.

GM can take a big step towards accomplishing some of its bigger goals when it plays Spring Grove (9-1 overall) in the Section 1 nine man title game in RCTC Stadium in Rochester 5 p.m. Saturday.

With a win, the Superlarks (10-0 overall) will advance to their fourth straight state tournament and they will keep their quest for their third straight state title alive.

GM head coach Gary Sloan wants his team to be amped up for Saturday’s game, but he doesn’t want the Superlarks to get carried away. GM missed a couple of play calls early in a 21-20 win over Spring Grove in the final regular season game and he felt his team was a little too emotional in that contest.

“We want to be high, but not too high,” Sloan said. “We were a little too high the first time we played them. You can’t let the game be bigger than you. We’ve been in a lot of big games before and I think they’ll handle it better this time.”

GM is coming off a 33-8 win over Houston that saw the Larks struggle a little bit. GM had its first drive of the game stall on Houston’s five-yard line and the Hurricanes scored just the fifth touchdown against GM’s varsity defense this season.

“Part of that was Houston. Houston played real well and they were much better than the first time we played them,” Sloan said. “It wasn’t our best game and we weren’t as sharp as we needed to be, but I give credit to Houston.”

The Superlarks hope to be much sharper against the Lions. Sloan said to do that, GM must limit the big plays. In the teams’ first meeting, 271 of the Lions’ 393 total yards came on six plays and all three of their scores were on big plays.

The Larks are hoping to force SG to sustain a lengthy drive, instead of allowing them to go down the field on big plays.

“Both teams will make adjustments from the first time. We’re working on limiting their big plays. We want to make them drive the ball on us,” Sloan said. “We always talk about running the ball and stopping the run. Some teams like to throw the ball, but we still want to stop the run and force them to throw the ball.”

Although they haven’t played in a lot of full games this season, Sloan said his team should be in good enough shape to play its second playoff game in five days.

“I’m not overly concerned about our conditioning,” Sloan said. “We work hard in practice and our kids are in pretty good shape.”

The winner of the Section 1 nine man title game will play in the Class nine man state quarterfinals in New Prague 1 p.m. Oct. 31.