JUNIOR HIGH FOOTBALL PREVIEW
Two teams on two different ends of the standings will meet Thursday night as the undefeated junior high Tigers of Charleston will travel to Cedarville to take on the winless Pirates.
Charleston comes in with a record of 5-0, with mercy rule wins in three out of their five games. They narrowly missed the mercy rule against Pottsville (33-0), and defeated Ozark in their toughest game of the year 22-12. Cedarville is experiencing growing pains with a young team and an 0-6 record. Despite the difference in results, Charleston head coach Matt Stewart is keeping his Tigers from becoming complacent.
“Cedarville is competitive and they play hard,” said Stewart. “Their coaching staff, including former state champion Tigers quarterback Dustin Shelby, does a good job at putting their kids in a position to be successful.”
Cedarville will attempt to keep the ball on the ground and run out some clock to keep the high-powered Charleston offense off of the field.
“Aside from the opening kickoff and one defensive play, Cedarville held the ball on offense for the entire first quarter against Paris,” Stewart said. “You can tell the junior Pirates have embraced the run game. When they stay ahead of the chains, they make a 32-minute game very short.”
When Charleston does have the ball, it hasn’t taken them very long to score this season. Outside of the Ozark game, all of their scoring this season has came in the first half outside of one second half touchdown against Lavaca from the second string.
The defense has been equally impressive, allowing only 12 points, all against Ozark, against their first string defense.
Coach Stewart knows there is still room for improvement.
“Quite honestly we did not have our best practice today,” Stewart admitted. “I’m positive that our effort and attention to detail will greatly improve Tuesday afternoon when we strap on the pads for our biggest prep day of the week. We always harp on the process of getting better every day and competing.”
Charleston is led by sensational freshman quarterback Daeton Stewart. Daeton is 28-42 passing for 532 yards and 11 touchdowns. He has also added three rushing touchdowns. He has thrown TD passes to four different receivers: Tanner Schilling, Jaxson Todd, Cooper Carruth, and Carson Lensing. Running back Grant Little has three rushing touchdowns on the season and is also a threat as a receiver.
Cedarville is often a difficult place to play, being kind of a ‘blast from the past’ if you will, from the small grass field making the spectators very close to the action, no track, old-school goal posts, and wooden bleachers on the visitors side.
“Cedarville has a great setup and it’s always difficult for us to get going when we visit Glenn Wisely Field,” Stewart said. “The weather looks to be around 80 degrees and sunny for kickoff Thursday. The conditions are great for football but we need to get off the bus with our ‘A’ game and go execute.“
Kickoff time adjustment
Most nights, the seventh grade game will start at 5:30 pm, followed by the junior high game at 7 pm. However, this week, Cedarville has requested to have the junior high game start 20 minutes after the seventh grade game. This will likely put the opening kickoff closer to 6:30 pm on Thursday at Cedarville.
Photos by Sharon Baumgartner Dewitt.
