The East Jackson Eagles got their 2010-2011 season underway this week, as they faced off against Lanier to open the Titan Thanksgiving Tournament at Oconee County Monday night.
Results from the opener were unavailable at press time.
Following the tournament, the Eagles will travel to Apalachee on Nov. 30 to face the Wildcats.
This comes on the heels of a pre-season scrimmage at Archer that gave East Jackson a chance to see where they had to work going into this first week of play.
“The scrimmage did not go very well,” said coach Brian Turner. “But we did scrimmage a AAAAA school and were very short handed with four players that will play quality minutes not dressed out for the game for various reasons.”
Turner said the scrimmage showed the Eagles some “glaring weaknesses” that the team has to work on.
“Hopefully we will get those corrected very quickly so that we can be as successful as we can be,” Turner said.
Going into the regular season opener against Lanier Monday, Turner said they had found out a few things about Lanier from their scrimmage.
“But we are solely going to focus on ourselves at this point,” he said. “We have to make sure we are doing the little things rights and if we do that, it can eliminate some of the strengths that our opponent may have.
“We will play a little different this year from the years past but the one thing we want to be constant in is our work ethic,” Turner added.
East Jackson hopes to follow up on a strong 2009-10 season, where it went 9-6 in the region, finishing second to Jefferson in the subregion.
The team has been joined by members of the football team, who wrapped up their 2010 season just a few weeks ago.
The Eagles have four returning seniors this year, including Brion Youngs, Cody Gibbs, Jermaine Davis and Trae Knight. They’ll be backed by juniors Trent Dowdy, Tyler Collins, Tevin Dowdy, Jon Hue, Tyler Shipp and Jake Grindle, along with sophomores Nathan Crumley and Austin Johnson.
East Jackson will open the month of December with a road trip to Banks County on Dec. 3, then play their first home game of the season against Habersham Central on Dec. 4.
The Eagles will host Athens Christian and Dec. 7 and then travel to Hart County for their region opener on Dec. 10.
For more on this story, see Wednesday's edition of The Commerce News or The Jackson Herald.
