On Friday, August 22nd, the football team of Heritage High School took the short trip to Lakeview High School to play a game. Before the game ever started, the Generals knew it was going to be very tough and physical. The Generals started off hot and led at halftime 13-0. However, the Warriors weren’t going to give up that easy. With an interception from LFO’s Jared Mitchell, the Warriors took the lead 20-19 by the end of the third quarter. It was a very tight fourth quarter until Cohen Fletcher hauled in a huge catch to move the chains. This catch led to Brayden Slaughter running the ball into the end zone to put the Generals back on top. Heritage pulled out the win 27-20. Some of the coaches had a few things to say leading in and after the game.
Going into the game against LFO, Head Coach Jeremy New felt “great.” “I feel like our guys are mentally prepared and have been locked in all week,” he said. He also talked about how they needed to clean some things like penalties and mental mistakes from week one’s game against Christian Heritage. The Defensive Coordinator, Coach Fleming, stated, “If we play well we should and will win. If we don’t play well we will lose.” He believes the team needs to use film from previous years to help the team prepare and guide them to a win.
After the team won, star safety Brody James said, “I feel like we were physically and mentally tougher than them. We are better coached, and haven’t been beaten by them in 12 years, and we made it 13.” Coach New thought the team had played well in 3 out of 4 quarters. He said, “It was not a very clean game, but at the end of the day, we still got the win. We need to learn to stay poised all night and cut down on the penalties and we will be tough to beat.” Other coaches and players seemed to agree that if they can cut down on the penalties and mental mistakes, they will be a very well-rounded football team.
This put Heritage at 2-0 before going into rivalry week. The game after this was against the Ringgold Tigers, who are also undefeated. In previous years, the Generals have always been successful against the LFO Warriors. In the past 13 years Heritage has been 13-0. However, against Ringgold it has been different. The Generals fell short to them by nine points two years ago, and lost by a field goal last year. After this big win against Lakeview, the Generals plan to use this momentum to beat Ringgold.
