White County Looks For First Region Win Against Wilson Central

Story by Rusty Ellis

The White County Warriors sit at 3-3 overall on the season, but find themselves with their backs against the wall with a 0-3 mark in region play.

Coming on the heels of a 56-27 loss to Green Hill, head coach Mark Fraiser says his team learned a lot about coming mentally prepared, especially in region matchups.

“It just goes to show you’ve got to come ready to play every Friday night,” Fraiser said. “You can’t listen to the noise. I thought we were flat coming out, and we had a lot of mistakes, mentally. We tried to play some tighter coverage, and we got beat deep multiple times…if you’re not prepared and excited to play, we’re not good enough to beat anybody if we don’t play with a lot of emotion.”

This game is interesting, because there’s plenty to learn from, but it’s also the kind of game you’d say to just forget and move on from. Fraiser says he’s working on balancing those two sides out as the team prepares for their game this week.

“We can’t completely wash it out because we don’t want a repeat,” Fraiser said. “You also can’t dwell on it as well. I think that game was an outlier, I don’t think we’re as bad as that game appeared…we want to try to learn from our mistakes, but we also have to stay confident.”

There might not be another more important game around the Upper Cumberland this week, as the Warriors welcome Wilson Central to town for a big region battle. A win puts them right back in the playoff hunt, but a loss can be equally as damaging.

“It’s all-or-nothing,” Fraiser said. “There’s no way around it, and there’s no sugar-coating it.Our goal is to make the playoffs, and if we don’t win this game, we’re not going to. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.”

As far as their opponent, Fraiser feels like this is the best defensive team they’ve faced yet. Wilson Central is only allowing 13.5 points per game, and the most they’ve given up is 25 points to Green Hill.

Even more impressive, they held Mt. Juliet, a team that hung 44 on White County two weeks ago, to just 14 points last week. Needless to say, Fraiser knows his team will have their hands full on Friday.

“They really get after it (on defense),” Fraiser said. “Nobody’s really moved the ball against them. They held Lebanon to seven points…it’s a good football team. They’re physical up-front, and defensively, they’re just well-rounded. They’re good in the secondary, good up-front. It’ll be another tough test for us.”

The two teams will face off in Sparta on Friday at 7 P.M. The game will be live-streamed on Upper Cumberland Reporter 2 on Facebook.