Jason Martin hopes Friday night will be the first in a long line of wins as head coach of the Lakeside Warriors when his team hosts Ringgold.
The first-year head coach of the Warriors arrived in Sibley towards the end of the academic school year with hopes of changing the culture around not only the program, but the school.
“We’ve been building some school spirit so far this school year,” Martin said. “We’ve had an assembly this week talking about school pride, we’re starting a student section at our games and we’re going to rope it off for them and make shirts. Hopefully, it’s going to be a big crowd of people from the community coming out to see what we’ve got.”
With enthusiam on the rise, the Warriors could really help their own case for support with a win Friday night.
Ringgold enters Sibley a mystery, as the Redskins didn’t play a scrimmage or jamboree game. With no film, Martin has gone back to basics for preparation.
“This week we’ve been working on our base offense and defense,” Martin said. “We really don’t know what we’re going to get from them, so we’ve just been working on technique and correcting the things we didn’t do so well last week in the jamboree.”
So far, so good says the head ball coach.
“I think we had a great week of practice,” Martin said. “After watching the film from last week, I think the kids see just how close we were to competing with North Webster. On our passing plays we had guys open and on runs we had holes for our backs to run through if we just hit them. On defense, we had guys there to tackle them in the backfield, but we just missed it. I think they’re encouraged by how close they were.”
Against Ringgold, Martin said his team is preparing to be physical up front and try to control the game on the ground early to set up the pass.
“We’ve focused a lot on our run game this week,” he said. “We want to get behind those big guys. We have a lot of experience up there with three, 3-year starters. It’s their first time in this system, but it gives us some leadership up front. They’ve answered the call this week at practice and pushed really hard.”
Lakeside quarterback Jayke Stewart threw the ball with mixed results one week ago, but Martin said his signal-caller continues to improve.
“We’ve cut down some of the playbook and we’re going to do the things he’s comfortable with throwing the ball. He along with a bunch of others, maybe were a bit nervous last week. But we think we got that out of the way and we’re ready to show people what we can do.”
The Warriors and Redskins kick off at 7 p.m. in Sibley.