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| Andray Pope (4) picks up yards against Thomasville. |
Those of you who didn’t make it out to Hillcrest’s spring
football game on Friday night missed a real treat.
Most spring games are really just glorified practices, but
Friday night’s spring game turned out to be one of the most competitive that I
can remember watching. Hillcrest hung on to win the back-and-forth affair,
19-17, but it could have gone either way right up to the end. No doubt those in
the stands got their money’s worth.
The way it was explained to me, the first two quarters of
the game were played by the true varsity teams from each school. The third
quarter included a few starters, but was mostly played by second and
third-stringers. The fourth quarter featured mostly junior varsity players.
In the first half, I was especially impressed by Hillcrest’s
running game. Hillcrest running back Andray Pope had a big night. He had
several big runs and was a load for the Thomasville defense to try to bring
down. To say that he’s a punishing runner would be putting it mildly.
Thomasville also brought a pretty good team to the game. One
of their assistant coaches told me earlier in the week that they were
rebuilding, looking to replace 20 graduating seniors from last year’s team.
Also, they’re having to replace their entire offensive line. With that in mind,
they still looked very good and presented Hillcrest with a good challenge on
Friday night.
Someone asked me earlier this week about the crowd on Friday
night. I’m terrible at estimating that sort of thing, but I’d say that there
were maybe a couple of hundred fans on the home side of the bleachers. Just
eyeballing it, there were a lot of empty seats.
More than likely, there are several reasons for the size of
the crowd. This time of year, there’s a lot going on, especially on a Friday
night. You’ve got youth baseball and softball being played and there’s a lot of
graduation and end-of-school events going on in and around Conecuh County.
Detroit Webb and Brandon Bush were also broadcasting the
game live over the radio, so I’m sure that some folks were listening to the
game at home. I spent most of the fourth quarter in the press box with them,
and they bring a lot of youthful energy to the broadcast. They are both looking
forward to next season, and they’re both predicting that Hillcrest will have
another big year on the gridiron.
Perhaps the best thing about spring games is that they give
coaches a better idea of what they need to work on as they prepare for the
start of the fall football season. I’m sure that Hillcrest’s coaches saw some
things they’d like to improve on in the offseason and they now have plenty of
time to correct the mistakes they saw. On the other side of the coin, I’m sure
they saw some things the team did well. Sometimes identifying your strengths is
as useful as addressing a weakness.
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