Calhoun back on the road this week
Jackets will play again next Thursday against Cedartown
The Calhoun High School football team will try to remain road warriors when they travel to Woodstock Friday night.
The Yellow Jackets ended a two-week layoff last Friday night in Rossville with a one-sided 56-7 victory over Ridgeland and the visitors did not look like a team that hadn’t played in a while — scoring 35 points in the first quarter to seize control immediately.
“It was a fun game,” Calhoun head football coach Clay Stephenson said. “We wanted to come out and play real well right from the get-go and it was great to see the kids do just that. I know we hadn’t played in a couple of weeks and you never know how a team is going to look when they been off like that, but I know the kids were super excited about playing and they were ready to go. And I thought they showed that from the very first whistle, which is exactly what we were looking for.”
Finishing with over 400 yards in offense while holding Ridgeland to less than 120, everyone on the roster played. Coach Stephenson and his staff played their starters, their junior varsity teams, and all their freshmen as the youngest players on their roster outscored the Ridgeland varsity, 14-7, in the fourth quarter after the team from Gordon County led 42-0 at halftime.
“It was great to see everybody that we played do such a good job, “Stephenson said. “It was a lot of fun to see them playing so well and playing so hard. For some of those guys, it was their first time out there under the big lights on Friday night and I thought they handled it very well. But I don’t think there’s any question that after not playing for two weeks and losing the last game we had played, the kids were super excited about getting to play again and it showed.”
Now they remain on the road this week to play winless Woodstock Friday night before closing out their non-region schedule next Thursday back at Phil Reeve Stadium against Cedartown in a makeup game after they could not play on their original date because of Covid-19 issues that forced Cedartown to call off two games.
“We’re excited about getting to play next week,” Stephenson said. “We were really disappointed that we didn’t get to play when we were supposed too, but we’re both off next week and we were able to work things out and reschedule the game.”
Woodstock stands 0-4 on the year and the Wolverines have struggled to this point, having been outscored, 146-21, and shutout twice already this year.
They have been silenced offensively by Sequoyah, 28-0, and Creekside, 48-0, and lost 49-14 to neighboring River Ridge in their highest scoring game of the year. Last week, the Wolverines fell 21-7 to Campbell in their tightest game thus far.
Coach said he knows Woodstock will be a formidable foe but the emphasis will be on how Calhoun is playing and not the Wolverines.
“We don’t really know that much about them because this is only the second time we’ve played them. We do know they are a 7A program so they’re a big school,” Stephenson said. “But our main focus in these non-region games is us and how we’re doing. We’ll learn more about Woodstock and what they want to do once the game gets