LFO looking to ‘not be satisfied’ as prep begins for 2019
Just about six months removed from its best season in several years, the LFO Warrior football team recently returned to the gridiron for two weeks of spring practice. The two weeks culminated this past Friday night with a scrimmage at East Ridge High School in which the Warriors prevailed, 29-7.
The Red- and- White won seven games in 2018, faced off with Calhoun for the 6-AAA title on the last night of the regular season and secured a home playoff game for the first time since 2004, despite having graduated over 20 seniors from the 2017 team.
And like last year’s team, the Warriors will once again have some big shoes to fill.
While LFO will be returning key players, it will be up to some new faces to pick up the slack left by several outstanding graduating senior players.
“There are some spots that we have to have some guys step up, but we had the same situation a couple years ago,” Campbell said. “I think each situation brings about a new theme and a new type of team. One thing I’m really excited to see about this team is that we have some great leadership, at least from what I’ve seen so far, especially from these rising seniors.”
Around 60 players were in uniform over the past two weeks, although the Warriors were still missing a handful of players who are still involved in other spring sports.
“The main goal (of spring practice) is to get these guys a lot of reps, especially for our younger guys,” Campbell added. “We graduated quite a bit, like we did the year before, so we have a lot of new guys at new positions. It’s an opportunity for them to get better for nine days leading into the spring game and to let them show us what they’ve got.”
While there is a still a buzz throughout the school and community about last year’s season, Campbell stressed that his team had to keep pressing forward.
“Every year is a new year,” he continued. “Two years ago, we were 5-5 and this time a year ago we were telling our guys that we wanted to do even better than that and to not be satisfied. Same deal with this group. We don’t want to be satisfied. Going to the (state) playoffs was awesome. It was a great experience and it was something that hasn’t happened for a while, but at the same time, we want to go farther in the playoffs.
“Our goal, like every other team’s goal, is to win a state championship. We also want to win a region championship because we haven’t done that yet. We fell short last year to Calhoun, but it’s still our goal to win one and go deep in the state playoffs.”