Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Warriors seeking history
The Lamar Warriors have never won an outright conference championship.
They can take a gigantic step in that direction on Friday night when they travel to Ozark to play what essentially is the 4A-4 Conference championship game.
“It’s an exciting time for us,”
Lamar coach
Josh Jones said. “The kids are excited. We’ve had a lot of games that were really, really tight that went our way. We feel very fortunate for that for sure. Getting through tough games like that gives the kids confidence. They’re playing well.”
Standing in the way, though, is conference heavyweight Ozark, which has won two of the last three conference titles and 17 in all.
“They’re incredibly physical and have tons of tradition,” Jones said. “They’re everything that everybody else is striving to be.” The game pits two teams with a run-first mentality.
Lamar’s Wing-T attack averaged 301 yards per game with senior wingback Tony Balmer leading the way with 642 yards and nine touchdowns. Senior quarterback Landon Harrison leads the team with 10 touchdowns with 533 yards rushing. Fullback Damien Hendrix, a 205-pound junior, has 420 yards and three scores.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Ozark coach Jeremie Burns said. “They do some two tight, double-wing stuff, but they can spread it out. It will take a little different preparation this week.”
Ozark knows all too well about what a run-oriented team is capable of after last week’s game against Pottsville.
Pottsville took the opening kickoff and kept the ball most of the first quarter. Ozark stopped Pottsville on fourth down at the 17, and Eli Masengale immediately reeled off an 84-yard touchdown run with 3:47 left in the first quarter.
Pottsville again went on a long drive, finally missing a field goal with 1:15 left in the second quarter. Ozark ran three plays, lost 2 yards and punted but led, 7-0, at the half.
Ozark had four plays in the first half for 82 yards and had possession for 66 seconds. Pottsville had 36 plays for 154 yards and 10 first downs with 22:54 possession time.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Burns said. “We had a tough one with them. They did a good job of reading our defensive linemen. We’ve got a little work to do this week.”
Ozark finished with a 3514 win.