​It’s a matchup featuring two teams with very different identities. Gladewater is celebrating homecoming this Friday night, but the Bears know they’ll need to stay focused with unbeaten Athens coming to town. As Gladewater leans on its old-school veer attack, the Hornets are looking to keep their perfect start intact in what could be one of the top non-district matchups in East Texas.“It’s special. It’s one of them things where you have homecoming, so it’s a lot of other events going on, so I told the kids just to make sure we keep the main thing the main thing. And that’s playing football,” said  Jermaine Lewis, Gladewater football head coach.For Gladewater, Friday night is about more than just the homecoming festivities.“You know, our main goal was to make sure we got better. You know, I don’t know no other way of doing it than to play some of the tougher teams in the area,” Lewis said.And the Bears know exactly what they’re getting into. Athens is coming to town after starting 4-0. Hornets head coach Zac Harrell says his team isn’t taking that record for granted, though.“Every week’s a new week. You know, we show up Monday. We want to celebrate the wins over the weekend after the game Friday, we want to celebrate as a team. But you show up Monday; it’s a new week, and we go back to work,” Harrell said.That mindset will be tested against a Gladewater offense that doesn’t look like what Athens sees every week.The Bears run the veer, something Lewis describes as old-school football.“I would say throwback. You know, we’re going to run the veer, we’re going to run the ball a lot and play really good defense. So I say just straight old-school football,” Lewis said.For Athens, that means preparing for something different.The Hornets know where they need to improve, especially as Gladewater’s offense presents them a unique challenge.“We feel like all three of those games we could have won by wider margins, and we could have ended them instead of making them back and forth until the end,” Harrell said.While Gladewater will have the homecoming crowd behind them, Athens will bring an unbeaten record and a lot of confidence into Friday night.Two teams, two different styles and one more non-district test before the games start to mean even more.