Thunder ready for some Tuesday night football

It will be a strange day and a strange time for football.

But Brett Timmons doesn’t want the calendar to dictate the play of his Out-of-Door Academy Thunder.

“No matter what day it is, we have a job to do,” the head coach said. “If it’s at 5 p.m. or 2 p.m., Monday or Tuesday — when we step off the bus, we’re there to play.”

The Thunder head to Naples for a 5 p.m. kickoff today to face St. John Neumann to play a game that was washed out Friday by inclement weather.

It’s just another twist for ODA (1-1), which hasn’t played since visiting Cardinal Mooney on Sept. 11 — the Thunder’s Sept. 18 game with Naples First Baptist Academy was cancelled. But that was a non-district game that didn’t need to be played.

This one — a Class 1B-District 6 opener for each team — is much more important.

“We went back to basics, healed up a little bit after the Mooney game,” said Timmons, whose team lost 30-8 to the Cougars. “The players, they’ve had a bitter taste in their mouths from that 30-8 loss for a week and half. They want to right a wrong, and put a tick in the left side of the column instead of the right side. This is a district game, so it’s an important.”

The six-team district got under way Friday, with Bradenton Christian and Fort Myers Evangelical, both of which are undefeated, picking up victories.

“The gauntlet has been thrown,” Timmons said.

The Celtics (0-2) are a big, physical team, Timmons said, who gives opponents a different look on defense. — a 3-3 stack.

“That’s something we’ve had to prepare for. Up until now, we’ve only seen four- or five-man fronts,” he said. “(Monday), we had another walkthrough, and reviewed the game plan we were going to use on Friday. We made some tweaks, but we made sure the guys remembered what we covered last week.”

Despite the oddity of playing on a Tuesday, it won’t be a short week for the Thunder — Friday is their bye week.