Southland football soars in scrimmage

By Melissa McCaghren

Slatonite GM

The Southland Eagles took to the field last Friday (Aug. 21) to scrimmage against Wellman.

Head Coach Dusty Grantham said the team did well against the team, who defeated Southland by 30 points last year in six-man football.

“We played with them and even outscored them. I thought we did a lot of good things, but definitely found some things to work on,” he said.

There will be a lot of work done before the team opens their season Friday against Cotton Center.

“Our footwork was sloppy on both sides of the ball,” said Grantham. “We have to rep that everyday, but especially when they get tired you can see the technique start to fall off.

“(We are just) continuing to see how we handle the details. We preach small things matter because they turn into big things. We have a lot of young kids, so also want to see how they handle a full Varsity game.”

All of this will be important when they play the Elks Friday.

“They run a lot of spread so we will have to be disciplined and have good feet on defense,” he said. “Offensively, we will continue to be vanilla and work on blocking. If we play disciplined I like our chances.”

The players as well as Grantham also have prepared themselves for the COVID-cautious season. Each athlete has their own water bottle and the Eagles are following all protocols issued by the Texas Education Agency, University Interscholastic League and the CDC.

The Eagles open up their season at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (Aug. 27) in Cotton Center. They will be on the road the first three weeks of the season before returning home to compete against Wilson on Sept. 18.