Dragons will host Halls for home opener Friday night
Anderson County starts region title defense at Hixon
Dragon Trenet Herrell makes a shoetop stop on CAK’s J.D. Dunn Jr. last Friday night. (photo:Ken Leinart )
Anderson County travels to Hixon for a rematch after the Mavs’ blowout 56-14 win against the Wildcats last year. Anderson County held the homefield advantage last year. Whether playing away this year will hurt the Mavs remains to be seen.
Anderson County comes into the game 1-1 after a heartbreaking loss to Powell this past Thursday and a decisive victory over hometown-rival Clinton High School.
Hixon, meanwhile, enters the game 0-2 after losing 39-16 and 28-0 against Brainerd and Signal Mountain, respectively. In a strange coincidence, Anderson County is currently ranked 29th in the state, while Hixon is ranked 290th, although, within the 4A class, AC is ranked third, while Hixon is ranked 40th.
David Gillum, head coach for the Mavs, said the team is just excited for its first road game.
“It’s our first road trip, so it’s just exciting to get away for a week, and our first region game,” he said. “It’s always exciting to get that region schedule started, so we’ll just be focusing on getting our fourth region championship.”
When asked whether the Mavs are doing anything special to prepare for the game, Gillum said they don’t expect anything new from Hixon.
“They won’t do anything we haven’t seen before,” he said “It’ll just be a holistic approach, blocking well and tackling well, and we’ll spend more time on us fixing our problems rather than focusing too much on what they’re doing. We should be read to go this Friday. We’re looking at possibly getting Anthony White back this Friday, and getting him some reps to start transitioning him back to the lineup. He’s been out all season so far due to an injury, and he’ll be a big addition to the team.”
Meanwhile, Clinton High hosts its first home game of the season against the so-far-undefeated Red Devils. Clinton enters the game 0-2 for the season after losses to both Anderson County and Christian Academy of Knoxville. The Red Devils, meanwhile, have beaten both Gibbs and Karns, going 31-17 and 32-21 respectively against both opponents, and stands 1-0 in the region.
Last year, Clinton made a strong showing in the second half against Halls, holding the Red Devils to only a single score after a disastrous first half and coming back to lose by only eight points.
Coach Darell Keith addressed Clinton’s 0-2 start, saying:
“We’ll win when we’re supposed to win. It’s a process. I’m not coming in to do patchwork, I’m rebuilding this house from the ground up. It’s hard to build a house with old material. You have to use new material, and that’s your freshmen. Demolition is always bad, but you have to tear some things down and tear some things out to bring in that new material. We’re refurbishing from the ground up.”
When asked whether the team is planning on doing anything specific in the game against Halls, Keith said only, “Speed versus power.”