Sonoraville will face early challenges in region play
MTenney@CalhounTimes.com
For the Sonoraville football team, the start of football season brings on a sense of urgency that may not be there as much for other teams in Northwest Georgia.
Sure everyone is fired up just because it’s football season. And teams, players, and coaches are all jacked up because it’s time to take the field again.
But for the Phoenix, the schedule that determines where they are in the playoffs and who they will play or if they will even be in the playoffs at all, begins a little bit earlier than for everybody else.
You see, the Phoenix are in 3-A Area 6, which has nine teams.
And that means the Big Red start the games that determine their playoff status in week 3 of the Georgia high school football season while most teams start playing their region games in week four or even week five.
And Region 6 is no slouch with defending league champion Rockmart dominating the conference last year in finishing 8-0 in the league and 10-2 overall. But after that a number of teams stayed in hot pursuit of the three remaining postseason slots until the final week of the season.
Sonoraville was not one of those teams because the Phoenix began region play with five straight losses to pretty much end their playoff hopes. But they did play spoiler in those final three weeks by winning those games to finish three and five in the region and just a game away a possible playoff berth.
After Rockmart, North Murray was second in the Region with a 6-2 mark while Adairsville finished third at 5-2.
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have to do that because there are players pushing players that makes the team just that much stronger.”
The Warriors did have trouble moving the ball on the ground in their scrimmage against Coahulla Creek last week, but just missed on a couple of big pass plays.
Hamilton said its August and they’re still working out the kinks.
We just have to work on correcting our mistakes,” he said. “We’re still working on getting our timing down and still working on getting all the correct assignments down. And we’ll get there. We just have to keep working and keep believing and playing hard and playing with confidence and we’ll make those plays that are there for us to make.”
Hamilton said he believes he and his staff will see a much calmer team this week because now many of his players know what the Friday Night Lights experience is all about.
“We did have a lot of new guys out there last week and there may have been some nerves and some jitters,” Hamilton said. “I do think we calmed down as the scrimmage went along but I know we had lot of new players out there on a varsity football field for the first time.
“We had a lot of players out there that were new to their position. We had a lot of players out there that were just new to varsity football and the best thing for them is to continue to play hard and gain that experience that comes with playing every week,” Hamilton said. “That’s why we’re excited about scrimmaging Sonoraville this week.”
It would seem both players are going to be playing a lot of young players this year as Gordon Central had a number of freshmen and sophomores playing last Friday night and Sonoraville also had a large group of underclassmen on the field pretty much from start to finish against the Villa Rica.
For Sonoraville, besides the 13 seniors, they have 15 juniors on the roster, meaning that have over fifty 9th and 10th graders looking for playing time.
A lot of those young guys got there first real varsity experience last Friday night when the Big Red Machine put on a strong performance against Villa Rica.
The Phoenix were 5-5 last year and just missed making the playoffs and despite their young roster start this season, head coach Denver pate and his staff are looking to get their club into the postseason.