Sophomore Damarea Whitt of the Oak Ridge Wildcats, right, breaks up a pass intended for senior Chad Barksdale of the South-Doyle Cherokees during a pre-season scrimmage at Oak Ridge High School on Thursday.
The regular season starts in two weeks, and the Oak Ridge Wildcats need to play tougher and more aggressively, Coach Joe Gaddis said after the team’s second pre-season scrimmage on Thursday.
The Wildcats played the South-Doyle Cherokees at Ben Martin Track at Oak Ridge High School. It was also the second scrimmage for the Cherokees.
The South-Doyle varsity team scored three times to Oak Ridge’s two. The Wildcats played better as the scrimmage progressed and the team made adjustments, but the Cherokees “drove down the throat” on their first two possessions, Gaddis said.
“That’s not good,” he said. “We’ve got to play tougher, more aggressively, more physical.”
Oak Ridge opens the season at home against Farragut on August 29, and Gaddis said there is a lot of work to do before then. The team is still evaluating who will start at quarterback. Junior Gavin Warrington started the Thursday night scrimmage, and junior Logan Fadnek went in for one play before the varsity scrimmage ended after a roughly 40-yard run by junior T.J. Allison.
The scrimmage then continued with the junior varsity teams.
Gaddis said he would have liked Fadnek and the varsity team to play some more.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
Jeff Ryman says
Slightly off-topic, but this article prompts me to ask what is the status of Blankenship Field and the bleacher replacement?
johnhuotari says
Jeff,
I haven’t had a chance to check into the status of the visitors bleachers, but there is a picture of the stands posted on the Oak Ridge Wildcats Football page on Facebook. As far as I can tell, they appear to be mostly complete. I was unable to upload a picture of the visitors bleachers to this comment section.
Thank you,
John