Red Devils make final preparations in scrimmages

RED SPRINGS — Over the last three weeks, high school football players have honed their skills in practice against their fellow teammates. This week, though, they finally got to see other competition.

Red Springs hosted preseason scrimmages against both East Columbus and West Columbus on Thursday, giving some of the younger Red Devils players the chance to see the field before the games start for real with next week’s start to the regular season.

“I wanted to see some of them sophomore kids go out there and play ball and see how they look against some competition,” Red Springs coach Tim Ray said. “I know in practice they fly around and they do well, but it’s different when you’re against another team and get some live competition. They did well today.”

The teams played each other in a round robin, with each session including a 10-minute goal line segment before a 30-minute live scrimmage.

The objective for the teams was to learn as much as possible about themselves in a comparatively low-pressure environment, eight days before Week 1 contests.

“We learned that we have a competitive offense, we have a strong offensive passing game, the run game is really good, we have a great O-line in front of us,” Red Springs quarterback Chase Boone said. “We also have a great running back, (Jakelsin) Mack, he’s a returning senior, he’s really good. Hopefully he’ll get that 2,000 rushing yards.”

Red Springs opened the night facing East Columbus. The Red Devils opened up the passing game, with Boone finding Gordon Mitchell for a touchdown pass while also rushing for another. Boone also connected with T.J. Ellerbe for a touchdown during the goal-line segment of the scrimmage.

“We run a lot of (run-pass option), so we’ll take what teams give us,” Ray said. “The biggest thing was, just to hit the run early. All four of our running backs had a good day today, so the pass just kind of naturally started developing as the scrimmages went on; they started trying to stop the run, so the passes were open.”

“We weren’t really going to come out and pass a lot tonight, we were going to let the backup quarterback come in, but once East Columbus came out with a defense we knew we could beat easily, we decided to bring out the passing core of our offense,” Boone said. “We really demanded a good offense of passing and we just executed.”

Against West Columbus, Boone threw a touchdown pass to Jordan Norton during the goal-line portion. Boone’s big night helps him to feel confidence ahead of the regular season.

“It gives me a whole bunch of confidence,” Boone said. “It really helps my teammates too, knowing that I’m here, transferring from St. Pauls, and I’m here to help us win and get us to a state championship hopefully. I really say it boosted our confidence a lot, and my confidence.”

Defensively, Red Springs didn’t allow East Columbus a first down. Against West Columbus, both defenses were strong, with neither team scoring until the Vikings had a rushing touchdown on the final series of the scrimmage.

“We tried to switch up some things,” Ray said. “We’ve got a lot of young faces on the defense, so we probably played 25 guys on defense today. With that, I think we did OK. We played a lot of guys at different positions. We’re not really landlocked, we’re still figuring things out because we’ve got so many young bodies and such a new team with new faces. Hopefully we can figure it out by week one, exactly who our best 11 is, and put them out there to fly around and play football.”

Red Springs will host Douglas Byrd in Week 1 next Friday, with the Red Devils looking to continue improvement after jumping from a 1-9 mark in 2022 to a 5-6 record last fall.

“We don’t have the most bodies, so we’re going to try to heal up, ice up over the weekend, and do what we do on Monday and take it one day at a time, and just try to win every day,” Ray said. “That’s our motto, win the day, so we’ll try to be the best we can be every day, so that’s what we’re going with.”

Purnell Swett was scheduled to appear at the Red Springs jamboree, but the Rams had to pull out of the event Thursday afternoon. A gas leak resulted in campus being evacuated Thursday, and all athletic activities at the school were canceled as teams could meet at the school to then travel to compete, and also could not get their equipment to do so, etc.