Story by Rusty Ellis
The Monterey Wildcats opened their season last Friday with a 35-6 win over 3A opponent Cannon County, a game that saw the Wildcats move the ball at will offensively.
Matthew Montgomery and Mason Bowman each rushed for two touchdowns, and Montgomery found Chandler Bowden from 64-yards-out for the other score. What stuck out the most to head coach Scott Hughes was the physical play from his team as a whole.
“I thought our effort was tremendous, one of the better team-efforts we’ve had in a while,” Hughes said. “We were excited to play, so if we can continue to keep that excitement, good things could be on the horizon for us, but we’re about to hit a tough stretch.”
One negative from the game for Hughes was his team’s ball security, as he knows they cannot afford to do that against bigger schools.
“There’s an obvious reason big schools call smaller schools, and we know that,” Hughes said. “We turned it over a couple times on Friday night and that bothered me. We also didn’t create any turnovers…you can’t be very good as a team if you’re sitting in that situation, so those are some things that we’ve got to clean up.”
Monterey welcomes in Cumberland County for week two, a team that won their season-opener over Whitwell 35-0. The Jets were 1-9 in 2020, but Hughes sees a team that is much-improved from a year ago.
“We talked about it Friday night for postgame,” Hughes said. “Take the records out. It’s new kids and new coaches, and philosophies are completely different…when they called and asked us to play, I knew the challenge that was going to be there. For our guys, we’ve got to be able to match some excitement because their program is on a completely different level than what they were. They’re hungry to win.”
While there are similarities in the level of athletes Cannon and Cumberland County both possess, the Jets run a different style from the Lions.
“Cannon County really put pressure on us by running between the tackles and Wing-T philosophy,” Hughes said. “Cumberland County is going to be a little more tight-end, three-receiver base. They’re going to try to spread us out with some (run-pass option), so you’ve got to be able to cover the entire field against them.”
One player to watch from CCHS will be running back Colin Brown. In the Jets’ first win since 2016, Brown tallied 275 rushing yards and four touchdowns to pave the way to victory.
“I’m very impressed with what Cumberland County is doing right now,” Hughes said. “Their scheme is good, and they’re executing it at a very high clip right now. Their tailback had 275 yards on Friday night, so obviously they’re executing at an unbelievable rate right now so we’re definitely going to be challenged.”
The Wildcats and Jets will battle on Friday night at 7 P.M. The game will be live-streamed on Upper Cumberland Reporter 3 on Facebook.