Dragons prepare for Owls
EL DORADO - Junction City, which dominated Class 2A for the past decade, takes its talents to Class 3A this season. The Dragons make their debut this week in the 3A-6 conference with a road tilt at McGehee. The Owls, who went 3-8 a year ago, are off to a 2-1 start this season.
Junction City is 1-2 and coming off a heartbreaking 30-26 loss at Haynesville last week. The Golden Tornado scored the winning touchdown with three seconds remaining.
Though disappointed with the loss, Junction City coach David Carpenter said the Dragons played better. The game should also help in the preparation for the Owls, who run similar offenses and defenses as Haynesville.
“There’s a lot of similarities in Haynesville and McGehee. They run the same type of offense, have big linemen. They do everything correctly. Hopefully, we will be just a tad bit more prepared than we were last week,” Carpenter said.
“What we had set up to try to do against Haynesville, some of the things that didn’t work very well for us, we know not to try it. There are so many things
similar on both sides of the ball that they do. We’re just going to try to take what we did well and do it again anyway.”
McGehee is coming off a 7-6 win over Crossett. The Owls beat Baptist Prep 34-7 in the season opener before falling to Dumas 33-14.
McGehee, like Haynesville, has a ball-control, run-oriented offense.
“It’s just straight power,” said Carpenter. “They’re going to line up and try to blow you off the football. They’ll be happy to get four yards a play. They’re very content to maintain and run the clock and move the ball down the field. That’s what they like to do. They’re going to try to just pound away at it.”
How one-dimensional are the Owls?
“They can throw it,” said Carpenter. “As soon as I say this they’ll see it and start throwing the football, but they don’t like to throw it a lot. They try to lull you to sleep with the run, run, run and then boom, they’ll hit you with the big pass.”
He said McGehee’s defense, a 4-3, is the same as Haynesville.
“With so many similarities,” Carpenter laughed, “it’s just black-and-gold versus red.”
The coach said Tuesday his team is healthy. Physically, the teams match up well.
“We run against them so many times in track. We know what kind of speed they have. I think we have a slight advantage in the speed side,” said Carpenter. “But, size-wise, they’re a little bit larger than we are across the front. We just have to go with what we have.”
Junction City, which lost to topranked England in the season opener, begins the season 1-2 for the second year in a row. Last year, the Dragons reeled off six consecutive wins after falling to Rison and Haynesville early.
Carpenter saw improvement in his team last week but said there are some areas that still have to get better this week.
“We’ve got to do a better job tackling. We know that. Make sure when we do make good contact, we keep them wrapped up and wait on everybody else to come in and help us. That’s the main thing we have to do,” he said. “On the offensive side, our passing game has not been exactly where we want it to be, right now. That just comes with … each week we get better at it. We just have to continue to improve that thing. Those are the little things that we need to do.”
As for the new league, it’s a refreshing new challenge for the Dragons, who won five 2A state championships in the last 10 years and six since 2003.
“We’re excited about it. Getting to play new folks is always fun,” said Carpenter. “You don’t know the newness of it. That makes it more challenging, just trying to see what you can do. It’s been awhile since we’ve played a lot of the people on the schedule. None of the kids we have now have played any of them except for Smackover.
“That’s the good thing about it, getting to go up against some new challenges and see how you come out.”
Kickoff in McGehee is 7 p.m.