With COVID running wild on the French Camp campus, football coach Nathan Wright just hopes his team gets to play on Friday night in the regular-season opener.
Wright said because multiple players were out with exposure, the Panthers were limited in practice.
“We’ve gotten a little bit closer to finding those guys,” Wright said. “It’s just tough with this COVID. For the team picture, we had 18 girls in the picture and there are 31 on the team. We are mixing and matching a bunch of stuff right now. I feel like we have most of our guys where we want them but we still have a lot of questions on the line. We’ve just moved a lot of guys around at multiple positions so if get to play, we will be prepared.”
Wright said on Monday night that Friday night’s game at Winona Christian was still in question.
“We have talked about it,” Wright said. “It will be the Lord if we have a chance to play. It’s just so tough with this junk right now. I told the team that we would take it one day at a time and maybe we would have enough to play.”
Wright said because of the limited numbers, it’s not a regular week.
“Our biggest thing right now is to play a game and have enough guys to compete,” Graham said. “If I knew right now that every guy that I have was going to be out there on Friday night, I would say yes we are playing. But I don’t know that. But I’m using the first three weeks to try and figure what our best team on the field is and what our identity is. I’ve been more multiple on offense than I have ever been. It’s just not a lot of fun right now trying to figure all of this out.”
The Panthers are scheduled to travel to Winona Christian to take on the Stars, who lost 50-0 to Carroll Academy in the season opener.
“It seems like one of us is not having a good year and the other team is,” Wright said. “It seems like the game has a been a blowout one way or the other and it’s been pretty lopsided. But I know coach (Junior) Graham is going to do a great job of coaching what he has. He will have his kids ready to play hard. We will have to come to play. They have an advantage that they have played a game and we haven’t.”
