First-year Hurricane head coach Ryan Evans is very pointed when he says what has to improve for his Wilmington High School football team.
Consistency, discipline, fundamentals.
Come Friday night in Hamilton County when Wilmington visits Ross, Evans and Co. will find out just how those facets of the game stack up.
Wilmington at Ross is set to kick-off 7 p.m. Friday night. Wilmington lost to Ross 48-31 last season in the first game.
WHS opened the year with three straight losses, won three of the next four then finished with three defeats.
Evans takes over from Scott Killen, who resigned as head coach after last season.
Ross was 7-3 last season and has a deep, solid group of returning players. There are seven of the 11 starters from last year’s defense back for another season.
“Ross is a triple option team that likes to run the ball down hill and on the perimeter,” Evans said. “They will run a 3-3-5 stack (defense) and have great linebackers leading the charge. They have a great kicking game that will challenge our returners.”
Evans said the Hurricane is “very healthy” as it enters the season. “Our coaches does a great job with not allowing a ton of banging in practice,” he said.
Evans and his coaches learned much about their squad through the off-season, including scrimmages.
“We started off very slow and sloppy early, but our coaches made great adjustments and we (became) more physical and cleaned up a lot of mistakes,” he said. “We are still not where we want to be but (are) making great strides every single day.”
Evans is excited to get the regular season underway.
“We are a new team, with new kids, new (coaching) staff, new identity,” he added. “We will run what we run, not what others did before us. Ross is a quality opponent and has run the same thing for year. It is our job to put our new defense and offense to the test against a consistent offense and defense.”
