VALDOSTA —
Preparing to play the No. 9 team in the nation is a challenge. But the Valdosta Wildcats are doing everything they can to get ready for it.
Valdosta (3-1) is getting ready to face Camden County (4-0) this Friday. Camden is the No. 9 high school football team in the USA Today Top 25 and the No. 1 team in Georgia’s Class 6A. Kickoff at Cleveland Field at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium comes at 8 p.m.
Valdosta has spent a bunch of time preparing for Friday’s game. The coaches have studied a lot of film, and have worked to try to develop an effective game plan. The team has spent a lot of time on the practice field getting ready for the game. Valdosta wants to be ready when Friday night comes.
“We’ve analyzed about everything we can possibly analyze, and then looked at as many films as we possibly can and then studied them up,” Valdosta head coach Rance Gillespie said. “They are a very talented football team.”
“You just try to find every advantage that you possibly can, and just come up with the best plan that you can, and just come out and go to work and put together a good week of practice and then go play the game on Friday,” he added.
If Valdosta is going to beat Camden, one thing it will have to do is find a way to stop the wing-T. Camden head coach Jeff Herron has been running the wing-T for over two decades as a head coach, and his teams have traditionally run it very well.
The Wildcats’ defensive coaches have spent plenty of time trying to prepare their players to defend the wing-T, and understandably so. Lowndes and Coffee — who are also expected to be among the top teams in the region — also run the wing-T.
“We’re going to see it (a few) times this year,” Gillespie said. “This is not the first time that we’ve seen it. We have seen the wing-T before, and had to defend the wing-T before, so that’s a little bit of an advantage. It’s the first time this season, so that always brings about challenges. But knowing that we were going to get it multiple times throughout the season going into the year allowed us to do some things over the course of the summer in preparation for it.”
Even though Camden has a standout quarterback this year (Brice Ramsey, who has verbally committed to Georgia), the team is still primarily running the wing-T.
“They’re not just vanilla wing-T. They’ll do all the wing-T stuff and then they’ve got a package it looks like they’re trying to showcase him a little more,” Gillespie said. “They’re in (shotgun) some, and doing some things with him throwing the football.”
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Gillespie believes his team is continuing to improve each week.
“This football team’s getting better. It’s getting better each and every week,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve played to our full potential yet; I don’t think we’ve seen that. You want your football team to continue to rise. I think we’ve done that over the last couple of weeks, and we’re continuing to get better each and every week.”
Last Friday, Valdosta defeated Newton 31-7. The Wildcats amassed 292 yards of total offense and held Newton to 155 yards, 82 of which came on one long run. Valdosta’s Malcolm Joseph ran for 136 yards and scored three touchdowns.
“I thought we did some good things,” Gillespie said. “There’s still some things that we hope to get better at. ... But other than one play, we held them to (73) yards of offense. We did some good things defensively. Offensively, we still want to eliminate some of the drops that we had, and continue to run the ball and continue to get better at running the ball.
“It’s not just about the things we want to fix. It’s about continuing to get better at the things that we’re doing pretty good. And that’s a key factor for us this week.”
Gillespie said he thought the Wildcats made fewer mistakes and committed fewer penalties last week. Valdosta was penalized a season-low seven times for 41 yards against Newton.
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Related Photos
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Valdosta’s Malcolm Joseph (1) carries the ball, while offensive linemen Jamel Hunter (53), Anthony Evans (54) and Dyshon Sims (55) block during the Wildcats’ 31-7 win over Newton last Friday. Mac Ingram | Special to the Times
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Valdosta defenders Elijah Thomas (97), John Bellamy (5) and Carl Battle (9) tackle Newton quarterback Kemani Pitman during the Wildcats’ 31-7 win last Friday. Mac Ingram | Special to the Times
Discussion
Valdosta preparing for Camden
VHS will face nationally-ranked team on Friday
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