Predicting Junior High athletics is always tricky. Young men entering their prime teenage years make it so you never know what a player will look like after a two-month summer break. Some come back that have somehow seemingly grown into a young Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight, while others remain small enough to get stuck in grass. Then you have the key players that have moved up to the big boy stage of playing Senior High Football to replace. With all of those variables and more to mull over before the season even starts, it makes it hard to say that a team will be just as good or worse than the season before.
One thing you can judge a Junior High team by though is their attitude and tenacity. If a team has a bunch of dog faced gremlins that truly believe they are ten-foot tall and bulletproof, then you better believe that they’re going to put on a show. The Mansfield Tigers Junior High squad isn’t the biggest squad you’ll see hit the field this season. They aren’t the most experienced either. But if you attended the Tigers’ scrimmage in Lamar on Tuesday, August 18th, then you noticed that they most definitely have a ten-foot-tall and bulletproof mentality and in their scrimmage against a larger Lamar team, that attitude is all that was needed to earn success.
The scrimmage was set up into two parts. Both teams would first run ten consecutive plays each and then follow that up with a game like two quarters. The Tigers started the ten-play section on offense and quickly established the run game. Kannon Copeland took the opening handoff for a six-yard gain. Quarterback, Elijah Burton, went to hand the ball off to Copeland again, but read the defense’s pressure and pulled the ball to get the Tigers down to the 15-yard line. Two plays for 25-yards isn’t too shabby of a start so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So, the Tigers continued to push downhill with punishing runs by Brantley Oldham and Kannon Copeland to get down to the edge of the goal line before Copeland plowed into the end zone for a Tiger touchdown. The two-point conversion was good to give Mansfield an 8-0 lead.
It only took six of the Tigers’ ten plays to put points on the board, but it only took Elijah Carlton two plays to get Mansfield into scoring position again. But the Tigers ran out of plays before they could capitalize on getting another score. Lamar took over with their first offensive possession of the ten-play series and got into the end zone quickly with five runs and two passes. The Warriors couldn’t convert their two-point try which set the score at 8-6 in Mansfield’s favor. The Warriors still had plays in their pocket and went back to the 40-yard line to restart their attempt of scoring again, but Brantley Whittaker blew through Lamar’s offensive line like a mad man, sacking the quarterback to end the 10-play series between the two programs.
Mansfield started the two live quarters on offense and just like with the 10-play series, wasted little time gaining momentum. The first play was busted by Lamar’s defense, but Elijah Burton still found a way to gain positive yardage. The second play, well, that was all attitude as Keaton Welch took a handoff and chewed through Lamar’s defense for a 68-yard Tiger touchdown. Ryder Pennington tacked on the two-point conversion to jump the Tigers up to an early 8-0 lead. Lamar’s offense tried to run the ball on the Tigers as effectively as they did in the 10-play series, but Waylon Humphrey, Gabe Haysmer, and Issac Rogers bowed up to shut them down in just six plays to give Mansfield the ball back again. Elijah Burton, Ryder Pennington, and Keaton Welch took turns busting through the Warriors’ defense to get Mansfield down to the four-yard line where Pennington scampered into the end zone for a Tiger touchdown. Josh Bascue punched his way past the goal line to add on a two-point conversion to boost Mansfield’s score up to 16-0. The Tigers’ defense shut Lamar out for the remainder of the two live quarters as Mansfield rolled past Lamar for a scrimmage win.
Scrimmages are to see who fits the best for a team in a position and Mansfield Junior High Coach, Trevon Moore’s definition has the right fits. “Elijah Burton stood out big time,” said Coach Moore. “He’s a great athlete and really gets after it on the field. Ryder Pennington did a good job for us at a back too”. Having great athletes is an awesome positive for a program to have on their side, but Coach Moore knows that there is more to it than just the athleticism of a handful of players to be successful. “This was a team effort. Each and every one of these guys worked their tails off over the summer and that’s what showed on the scoreboard today”. The scrimmage at Lamar proved that even though the Tigers lost a slew of good players from last year’s team, the 2026 group is more than capable of holding their own. Could we see another 10-0 run at the Junior High level this year? While it’s hard to predict such a feat at the Junior High level, it’s not looking too far-fetched early on.
