by Rusty Ellis
The Football season draws another week closer, as White County hosted both Clay County and Kingston for what turned into a physical scrimmage on Friday night.
For Clay head coach Bruce Lamb, he saw marked improvement from the team’s last scrimmage where they also ran into Sparta.
“Our kids lined up and played football, last week was more testing the waters,” Lamb said. “They grew up a lot in a week, they played really hard and they played really well.”
Lamb was even more pleased with how the second unit played, saying there wasn’t much of a drop-off from the starters to the backups. For a Class A team, that’s something that can’t be overlooked.
“There’s not a big drop-off at all and that’s huge because if someone goes down, you’ve got another player you can slide right in and not miss a beat,” Lamb said. “That’s huge…I know these guys will get it done. Effort comes from them, and they did that today. They came out and played.”
For Sparta, head coach Curtis Beaty echoed a lot of that same sentiment, saying these kinds of scrimmages are exactly why he scheduled the teams he did.
“I love having Clay and Kingston because they’re both physical football teams, and that’s what you want,” Beaty said. “I think we grew, we had a lot of mistakes, but we grew and learned from them.”
Beaty admitted to the presence of some apprehension during spring ball, but what he and the coaching staff have seen from a young Warriors squad since then has them feeling much better with just one week left of what he’s dubbed “rehearsal time.”
“We flipped completely, just how young we were and how bad our spring was, they’re just hungry for knowledge,” Beaty said. “They want to get better and they’re working to get better, and that’s all you can ask for as coaches.”
Following the weekend, both teams will prepare for their jamborees on Friday as their final preseason action before the regular season kicks off the following week.
