After an rough, injury-plagued start to the 2012 season, the Westwood football team has to feel good about where it stands heading into its bye week this week.
The Panthers are 2-2 after a huge, come-from-behind win on the road against Malakoff last Friday.
To WHS coach Roger Mays, 2-2 is way better than 1-3, and he said he can see the change in his players as well.
“I’ve been able to see it now that we’ve come back to practice,” Mays said. “The feeling with the team is so much better. Being able to come off of a win, and having two weeks to prepare is so much better and more pleasant than coming off of loss.”
That Westwood is able to be 2-2, despite what the team has gone through already this season, is more than impressive.
Before the season even started, the team lost two two-way starters in Nick Hicks and Anthony Mrdjenovich, who were arrested in connection with an Aug. 19 robbery of Mr. D’s convenience store.
Since then, the Panthers have lost numerous starters on both sides of the ball to injury.
The team is starting a freshman at center, has a first-year quarterback — Chris Thompson — battling injury and its two biggest rushing threats — Keke Hicks and Aaryon Robinson — also banged and bruised.
“I talked to them about (battling through adversity) every week and a couple of times its had to be after a loss,” Mays said. “It hasn’t been able to sink in until after a win, where you can point some things out, what they’ve had to do to overcome.
“They understand now that we can overcome things that come up.”
They’ve also learned that they have a lot of different weapons and looks that they can throw at their opponents moving forward.
In last Friday’s win over Malakoff, the comeback was orchestrated by Keke Hicks and his arm, as much as his legs.
The senior threw two second half touchdown passes — both to Dra Ross — in a great all-around performance that saw him rack up almost 300 yards of total offense.
Now, the coaching staff is looking at other ways to get creative. How they use that creativity each week will be determined by the opposing defense.
“I feel like, as we get into a week-by-week thing, we’re going to do what the opponent is going to give us,” Mays said. “We’ve toyed around with some new wrinkles that we feel good about. We’re going to line up in multiple formations, based on the defense.”
For a large majority of teams, district play is waiting on the other side of the bye week. That’s not the case, however, for the Panthers.
Westwood will have one more non-district tilt, a home game against Groesbeck, before beginning play in District 11-2A, Division I.
Mays said he did that by design, after seeing his team struggle to come out of the bye week last year.
The Panthers won the game before their bye last year, a 31-28 victory over Rusk, and the week before that had gone toe-to-toe with a very talented Arp team before falling, 28-27.
But, they opened district with a 24-7 loss to Madisonville in a game that Mays thought his team came out flat for.
“I felt like last year we got on a pretty good roll before our bye week, but we had to jump out of our bye week right into district, and we came out flat and that hurt us,” he said.
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Sports editor Justin Rains can be reached via email at jrains@palestineherald.com
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H.S. Football: Despite loads of adversity, Westwood confident heading into bye
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