Trojans look to build drives

BURBANK • Big plays have been the easy part for the Silver Valley High School football team.

It’s putting together drives and wins that has eluded them four weeks into the season.

The Trojans (0-4) will aim for their first win of the season at 7 p.m. tonight against Bellarmine-Jefferson (3-2) at John Burroughs High School in Burbank.

While some teams struggle to ad big plays to their repertoire, that hasn’t been the problem for the Trojans. Most of their touchdowns have come off long pass plays.

“All of our points have come off one big play,” said senior receiver Matt Weber, who has been the recipient of most the Trojans long plays. “We have to start getting some drive going. We don’t really have those big, long drives.”

“We are hardly ever in the red zone,” sophomore lineman Emil Barnett said. “We never get in the red zone.”

Silver Valley is coming off what coach Freezy Smalls calls the team’s best performance in a 41-12 loss against Xavier Prep on Oct. 2. The Trojans started to show signs of a running game and put together some drives.

Week-by-week the Trojans have shown subtle signs of improvement, Smalls said.

“I think the last game was our best game of the season where we were able to move the ball up and down the field,” Small said. “We didn’t punch it in to get it in the end zone, but we were able to move the ball.
“They are moving in the right direction. It’s a little slower than what I wanted, but they are moving in the right direction.”

Smalls said rushing plays have been there, but the Trojans have just missed hitting the right holes.

“It’s a lot of little things,” Smalls said. “They are trying too much. The holes are there open but they are trying so hard to do something that they are missing the open hole. They ran close to the hole and cut it out. If they’d have just hit the hole, they’d be gone.”

Today’s game marks the Trojans lone Saturday game of the season and it comes under less than ideal circumstances. Silver Valley began a four-day holiday weekend for Columbus day after Thursday, meaning the team wasn’t able to practice Friday.

The holiday weekend also means the Trojans will be missing several players from their roster. They will be with out quarterback Bryant Glenn. In his place, sophomore quarterback Dan Miller, who Smalls said is expected to be the Trojans’ quarterback of the future, will get the start.

“He’s got a pretty good arm on him,” Smalls said. “We just have to get him to get not too shaky back there with the defense coming in.”