Central Wildcats ‘Focus’ on Building Team

Central Wildcats ‘Focus’ on Building Team

Wildcats Aim for 4th Straight Title At District Level, Chance for State

CENTRAL — Central football coach Doug Dotson says his team has a “single focus” — building themselves into a winning team.

With the talent exhibited by Central in its scrimmage against Thibodaux last Friday, that shouldn’t be difficult.  But what might be difficult is East Feliciana, this Friday night’s jamboree opponent. East Feliciana is a newly-consolidated school, created by merging Clinton and Jackson.

The new school played football for the first time last year and was, well, undefeated (12-0).  Undefeated until the state semi-finals when it lost to perennial state champion John Curtis.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is, almost the entire East Feliciana team is back this year, including All-State junior quarterback Kendell Beckwith (6-3, 225), who passed for 18 touchdowns and 1,582 yards as a sophomore.  Oh, he also ran for 863 yards and 15 TD’s.

Anyway, East Feliciana is only 2A (as if that matters).

Central should have its hands full Friday at 5:30 p.m. at Bronco Stadium in Zachary.

Coach Dotson was very pleased with the Wildcats’ performance against Thibodaux.  Not a man known for lavish praise, Dotson heaped it on the team Friday night.  “Great job, men!  You did everything we asked you to do, and more!”

Dotson seems to have a special place in his heart for this young team, which is filled with talent.  Some say the talent is there to out-perform the Wildcats’ of 2009 and be one of the best teams in many years.  It really all depends on what Dotson is calling “Single Focus.”

LSU apparently doesn’t have it.  Teams don’t go out to a bar room en masse after curfew as a way to “build a winning team.”

In the Thibodaux scrimmage, Dotson found out what he wanted to know.  He saw the Wildcats out-hit and out-pace Thibodaux.

Central’s soon-to-be star QB Brett Courville ran for two touchdowns and another long gain.  Thibodaux saw nothing but his tail lights all during the game.

Central has some blazing speed that not many teams will be able to compete with.  The Courville-to-Gary Triplet combination wasn’t working Friday night but it will.  When Central spreads its speed to either side of the field, all I can say to opposing coaches is, watch out!

The DL did well, especially Joey Jarreau and Zach Hedrick.  Logan Metcalfe made some good calls.

The OL handled Thibodaux well.  Central’s 1st team on both sides is solid.  The 2nd and 3rd team didn’t get much playing time against Thibodaux, because lightning delayed the scrimmage for an hour.  We hope to see more of them soon.

On Friday, please wear maroon!

By Woody Jenkins, Editor, Central City News

 

 

Twitter Digg Delicious Stumbleupon Technorati Facebook Email

Comments are closed.