East Clinton will honor its senior football players Friday night in the home game with Fayetteville-Perry.
“Friday night is Senior Night for our six seniors, Patrick Dotson, Wyatt Riddle, Mason Huff, Garrett Elzey, Todd Wedding and Nate Vest,” coach Steven Olds said. “We look forward to honoring them and their contributions to the program over the last four years.”
Kickoff for the game is set for 7 p.m. in Lees Creek.
The Astros (2-4 overall, 0-1 in National Division) and the Rockets (4-2 overall, 0-1 National) are battling to stay in the league hunt.
Although not improbable, a two-loss team is not likely to win the National Division.
Fayetteville runs a spread offense with Levi Wiederhold at quarterback and Hunter Jester at running back. They are two of the offensive leaders in the SBAAC.
“Stopping them is a priority,” said Olds, who noted the Rockets use a five DB set on defense and their kicker is solid on special teams.
The Astros come in to this one off a 40-7 loss to Bethel-Tate.
“Bethel Tate is a good football team and maybe the class of the division, so no shame in losing to those guys on the road, that’s for sure,” said Olds. “I believe we learned a valuable lesson last week, that your attitude and how you respond to early adversity can sometimes dictate whether you win or lose. Two weeks ago against Minford, we got down early but our response was fantastic. Last week not so much. So as a staff, we talked to our team about the difference in those two games to reinforce what is expected and required in order to compete week in and week out.”
Olds said a slow start against the Tigers “snowballed out of control”and led to the 33-point difference.
“We challenged our guys at halftime,” said Olds. “I thought they came out and played much better in the second half. It was too little and way too late but it’s something we can build off of.”
