Longhorns win big over Volunteer in first scrimmage

The Johnson County Longhorn Football Team held their first regular season scrimmage last week, facing off against the visiting Volunteer Falcons. Despite facing a large opponent, the Longhorns did very well, playing with intensity and ultimately bringing out a win at three touchdowns to one. In fact, after taking the incentive and pulling ahead early in the game, Coach Mike Atwood was able to take out most of the varsity players on the team to give the freshmen and JV time on the field as well.
Coach Atwood seemed particularly impressed with the outcome and was hopeful about what it means for the official start of the season. “It always makes us feel better,” Atwood said. “This was a big school. Volunteer is in the same class with schools like Tennessee High and Science Hill so we feel pretty good about it. We played well against them and it was a boost in confidence.”
Despite losing several seniors last season, there were many familiar faces in the lineup. Quarterback Warren Kerley did a good job of managing the ball in the first five or six possessions before turning it over to give Justin Purdue a chance to work on his accuracy. Surprisingly, although the team lost most of their veteran receivers, Johnson County’s passing game was fairly solid, with Ryan Sauer and Greg Roark both making very successful catches in the third possession to ultimately put Patrick South in position to make the Longhorn’s second touchdown of the night.” We just had a lot of guys play well,” said Atwood. “We had a couple receivers step up and make some good plays. Greg Roark is going to be a pretty good receiver. We don’t have any receivers coming back that even played on varsity last year so we are really young there but they look good so far.”
South did very well as the core of Johnson County’s ground game and was joined by Jordan Grubb who pushed through on some very tough plays. “We saw some things we liked,” Atwood commented.  “They really played well. Patrick played well. We felt he ran the ball well. Grubb had a good game. Grubb is a good runner and we’re going to be using him a lot this year. He’s going to be getting more carries than the year before. He’s tough; he gets those tough yards for us. We moved the ball about like we wanted to so we were pretty happy.”

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