Extra Point Previews: Early County Bobcats

BLAKELY, Ga ( WDHN ) — It’s always tough when you lose a 2,000-yard rusher in high school football, but it becomes even tougher when you stack that with 21 other players graduating. Regardless, Coach Frank Killingsworth still sees reason for optimism for his Early County Bobcats.

“We’re looking forward to a good year,” Killingsworth said. “We had a good year last year, 8-5, made the third round of the playoffs. But then we graduated 21 kids, so we’re rebuilding this year. We’ve got three starters coming back on offense and four on defense. We’ve had good practices, a lot of enthusiasm. The kids are working hard.”

Killingsworth will have to find a way to replace All-State production on both sides of the ball after running back Ty Stovall and defensive lineman B’Anthony Wade both graduated. In the backfield, the Bobcats will look to Charles Williams and Eddie Stapleton, who each amassed over 500 rushing yards last season.

The big question on offense is at the offensive line.

“We graduated four out of the five offensive linemen and the two backup offensive linemen were also seniors,” Killingsworth explained. “So there’s no one just to move up. Those kids that are moving up have very little playing experience. But the thing about it, they’re dedicated. They’re working hard every day, and offensive line is not a glory spot, but it’s a dedication spot, and those kids are dedicated.”

But Coach Killingsworth isn’t afraid of adjusting the scheme to fit the personnel the Bobcats have in place.

“I look at it this way: your offense has to suit your people,” Killingsworth said. “We don’t have a big quarterback who can sit back there and throw it around to a lot of receivers. So what you want to do, you cater your offense. Sometimes people want to try to make kids fit into their offense instead of making their offense fit their kids, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re actually employing a little bit more option this year out of the wing team because our quarterbacks that we have are smaller kids that can’t stand back there and throw the ball around a little bit. So yes, we’re going to change a little bit. But we’re still going to be bread and butter. We’re going to run the football, and we’re going to play hard-nosed defense, and we’re going to be technically sound. No matter what offense we do or what plays we run, we’ll be technically sound.”

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