Blackhawks’ focus remains on selves

Pea Ridge coach Stephen Neal can’t stress enough how much his players need to focus on themselves on how they can improve their team and not as much on the Blackhawks’ opponents.

That method of thinking has worked as Pea Ridge remains unbeaten in 4A-1 Conference play and heads into this week’s contest against Green Forest with a six-game win streak.

“We’re always going to prepare for our upcoming opponent,” Neal said. “But our main focus is on us and how we need to improve every week.

“I had a couple of my seniors that joked about it a couple of weeks ago and asked me who we were playing. I was about to tell them Prairie Grove when they laughed and said ‘We’re playing ourselves.’ They were making light of the situation we have faced each week.”

A key improvement Pea Ridge (6-2, 5-0) has made over the course of its win streak is turnovers. The Blackhawks committed 10 of them and only forced one takeaway in the first two games, but has made significant improvement since then.

“In those first two games, it wasn’t just fumbles on offense,” Neal said. “We fumbled the ball away on special teams and our defense missed out on chances of forcing turnovers. Now we’re doing a much better job of taking away the football and forcing other teams into turnovers. That has really shown.”

— Henry Apple • @NWAHenry