It was a rough start to the season for the Central Holmes football team last week.
The Trojans couldn’t match the speed of homestanding Park Place as they fell 41-8 to the Class 5A Crusaders.
The Trojans are now 0-1 on the season and will host another Class 5A team in East Rankin. With a limited roster, the Trojans were overmatched by the Crusaders.
“We have nine kids that are sophomore and the speed of the game just sort of caught up with them,” first-year coach Mitch Womack said. “The speed of a high school game was vastly different. They played faster and they caught up as the game went on but by then, we were down. They were a lot faster than we were. We were out of position on some things. It’s a learning process. We hope to get better every week to get going. It was eye opening for some of our kids. Park Place has good skill kids and can throw it and pass it. They have a good ball club.”
The Trojans trailed just 6-0 at the end of the first quarter after forcing a pair of Park Place punts. But the Crusaders started to pull away in the second quarter with four touchdowns and led 34-0 at the half.
“As the game went on, they played a little faster,” Womack said. “We were healthy coming out of the game except for some bumps ands bruises. You could hear them talking and they are self analyzing what they needed to do better and you like to hear that. They weren’t down but starting to figure out what they needed to do. Each week is going to be a learning process.”
The Trojans’ only score came on a long run by Lawrence Wiley, who also ran in the two-point conversion.
“We just struggled moving the football on offense,” Womack said. “They blitzed every down and from all over the place. They were playing at a lot faster pace than we did. We are still pretty young up front and had trouble picking up everything they were throwing at us. We struggled in the secondary and their quarterback has a cannon. They just played a lot faster than we did.”
On defense, Jace Dean led the Trojans with 7.5 tackles while Jalen Webster and Jurden Engle each had 5.5 tackles apiece. Noah Steen had four tackles while Ellis Harris and Trae Humphries each had three tackles apiece. Lawrence Wiley, Barrett Fondren and John Riley each had two tackles apiece while Sean hare had 1.5 tackles. Eli Carr, Mike Jones and Gibson Parrish each had one tackle apiece for the Trojans.
