If there were dog days of fall, this stretch of October would qualify. Nevada’s prep football programs are into the bulk of their league schedules and every game has significance on the expectations of programs and, in the case of most, their playoff aspirations.

That’s certainly the case for the Rail City’s trio of high school football teams. Two are in action tonight while a third is taking advantage of its lone bye week of the season. Here’s a closer look at the two games involving Sparks and Spanish Springs and how Reed is approaching its week away from competition.

Lowry (2-3, 1-1) at Sparks (2-3, 1-1 3A North), 7 p.m.

During his weekly pregame telephone interview Thursday, Sparks football coach Rob Kittrell quipped he may as well say the same things he’d said the week before. Last week, Kittrell stressed that taking care of the football and stopping the Spring Creek run game would be important.

Indeed they were. Kittrell’s Railroaders just didn’t get the memo. Sparks turned the ball over four times and its inconsistent tackling left Spring Creek running wild for big plays on offense. Thus, it’s easy to understand why Kittrell has the same emphasis for his club this week. He just hopes he sees better execution in those key areas.

“I’m very frustrated. It comes back to just getting focused in practice and getting better every week,” Kittrell said. “We’ve got a young group of kids and it takes time to throw that light switch.

“It’s time to rebound. We have no more room for mistakes and errors or we’ll find ourselves out of the playoffs and we haven’t been in that situation in four years.”

The Railroaders’ veteran coach said Lowry is much improved over its struggling squads of recent years. He noted that the Buckaroos are in the second year under their coach and they continue to get better each week.

“Lowry likes to run the ball. They have a couple pretty good backs and are much improved over the Lowry teams from the last couple years,” Kittrell said. “Their kids are getting comfortable with the system and playing a lot harder. This is a different team. We’ll have to stop their run game and take care of the ball on offense.”

The Sparks coaches reinforce those two factors in practice daily. After watching film, the Railroaders’ staff was not happy with the way players tackled and pursued the football. If Sparks can swarm to the football and improve its tackling, as well as cut out its giveaways on offense, it will go a long way toward getting its second league win.

Kittrell also said if his squad can get off to a good start, he’s sure it will prove prosperous in the end.

“These kids are pretty resilient. They’ll be ready to go Friday night,” Kittrell said. “It would help if we’re able to get off to a good start. One thing I’ve noticed with this group is that momentum really affects them. When a lot is going well, everybody seems to play well, but when a few things go bad is when things really go south.”

North Valleys (3-2, 0-2) at Spanish Springs (4-2, 0-2 HDL), 7:30 p.m.

Coaches don’t like to be in must-win situations because it usually means they’ve lost a few games earlier that they needed to win. But, while he may not like it, that’s exactly what Spanish Springs coach Scott Hare knows his team is in tonight as they host the Panthers.

“You can definitely say this is a must-win in terms of what we have left on the schedule. I definitely think we need to beat North Valleys,” Hare said, while acknowledging North Valleys players and coaches probably feel the same way.

“We’ve faced the same two league teams and lost by similar scores. We were talking with their coaches when we were trading films and both sides said we knew this was going to happen. We just hoped it wouldn’t be us in this boat, but we knew there would be HDL teams who looked good in the non-league and they’d get to league and this would happen.”

When Hare says “this,” he’s referring to the fact that both his Cougars and the Panthers posted unblemished non-league records but have yet to win a league game against the High Desert League’s stiff competition.

“When you have six good teams and only four playoff spots, two have to go,” Hare said. “Now it’s us who are 0-2 and we have to get to three wins. Plus, we both have McQueen on the schedule and that’s not a fun task for that to be a must-win game.”

Hare said it’s no secret why his team cruised to four lopsided wins in its non-league contests only to be handed two one-sided defeats in its first two HDL outings.

“We’re facing better teams. Hug is ranked third in the state and Reno ninth. We’re playing good football teams. They’d beat anybody we played in the preseason and I think the schedule’s proving that,” Hare said.

The biggest task for Spanish Springs coaches at this point is to get Cougar players to respond to adversity rather than wilt under it. Hare pointed out that his squad never trailed en route to the four non-league wins, but once its opponent had more points on the scoreboard, the Cougars have gone into scramble mode.

“That’s our mindset,” Hare said. “And we’re not going to be successful, in sports in general, if we can’t deal with being both ahead and behind. … When things don’t go well, we’re not reacting well. We’re trying to put the kids in situations where their brain says ‘This isn’t fair. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.’ Then we push them through and talk about why they reacted in that negative way.”

Reed (3-3, 1-1 HDL) bye week

The Raiders had dropped back-to-back games for the first time in recent memory, before throttling Elko in eastern Nevada a week ago. Everyone in the Raiders’ camp was happy not to see that skid get extended going into a bye week.

“It was nice getting a league win under our belt and anytime you go into a bye week, I think it’s important to go in with something positive,” Reed coach Ernie Howren said. “I think things worked out the way we wanted them to work out.”

Raiders coaches started to implement some of the team’s gameplan for Hug next week, but they have also spent a good chunk of time trying to fine tune some fundamentals.

“We did put in a little bit of the defensive gameplan and we worked on a couple little changeups offensively, but we’ll get the bulk of that next week,” Howren said. “We felt this was a good week to work on some little things for Hug but also a week to work on some things that we haven’t been executing well and need to get batter at.”

In addition, Raiders players got Monday off from practice and also are getting Friday off. Howren hopes some extra rest will pay dividends later.

“We came in and told the kids, we’re only going to practice a few days this week, but in those few days we need quality practices. We’ve had a tremendous week. All year, the kids have bought in,” Reed’s eighth-year coach said.

Howren likes the timing of this week’s bye. With no game of their own, his coaches can watch tonight’s Hug-Reno clash. Reed will meet both schools in the coming weeks.

“I’ve always thought live scouts are valuable. That’s great for us that we can go watch them and we play both teams in the next two weeks. We couldn’t have asked for a better live scout,” Howren said.