Rogers Heritage Makes Strides In Second Season
WAR EAGLES LOST EVERY CONFERENCE GAME LAST YEAR
Thursday, November 5, 2009
FAYETTEVILLE — Daryl Patton has nothing but respect for Rogers Heritage.
That’s what a program earns from the Fayetteville coach when it’s come as far as the War Eagles have in two years.
Fayetteville (5-3-1, 4-2 7A-West) travels to Rogers to face Heritage on Friday night. What thePurple’Dogs will find is a War Eagles team that bears little resemblance to the one that began varsity play a year ago.
Last year, Heritage - without any seniors on its roster - opened the season 3-0 before losing all of its seven conference games, including a season-ending 63-34 loss to Fayetteville.
“I can’t even imagine doing what they did last year, starting a program with no returning starters and all juniors,” Patton said. “Those kids played hard last year. If you ask every coach that played against them, they’d tell you they were smaller, weaker and not as fast.
“But they gave everybody a hard time.”
This year, Heritage once again started perfect in nonconference play.
The only difference is the War Eagles (7-2, 4-2) carried that momentum into conference play, beginning with wins over Fort Smith Northside and Rogers High.
“We’re capable of playing real good football,” Heritage coach Perry Escalante said. “I think we’ve proven that this year.”
Heritage followed those wins with a loss to Bentonville, then took No. 1 Springdale Har-Ber - which defeated Fayetteville 39-14 last week - into overtime before losing. The War Eagles rebounded the last two weeks, however, with wins over Springdale High and Fort Smith Southside.
“You could just see their confidence growing and growing, and right now when you watch them on film, you see a team that believes and is playing hard,” Patton said. “They may not be the biggest or the fastest of any team we’ve played, but boy, they play harder than any team we’ve played.”
Heritage is averaging 33.3 points per game this season and has scored on 22 of its 26 trips inside theopponents’ 20.
The War Eagles have also converted on 55 of 112 third-down attempts (49 percent).
Junior quarterback Reed Brown showed potential last season and has only improved this year. The Heritage junior has completed 152 of 250 passes (61 percent) and has thrown 24 touchdowns to just six interceptions.
“They’ve shown the ability to score quick and often,” Patton said. “They’ve got our attention and our respect. We’re going to have to play a darn near perfect game to play with them.”
The winner of Friday’s game will earn the No. 3 seed from the 7A-West in the playo◊s, while the loser will be the No. 4 seed. Both teams have already secured home games for the first round of the playo◊s.
“We’re still waiting to put everything together,” Escalante said. “Seems like either the o◊ense is clicking and the defense is kind of struggling or defense is clicking ... We’re going to put it all together eventually.
“Friday night would be a great time to put together a complete game.”
Sports, Pages 7 on 11/05/2009
Comments
To report abuse or misuse of this area please hit the "Suggest Removal" link in the comment to alert our online managers. Please read our comment policy.
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.
Registration is required to make comments. Click here to LOGIN.
You can register for FREE to post comments and receive alerts.