Football Season Opener Friday Between La Grange and Bellville Will Be a Study in Contrasts
To call it a contrast in styles would be an understatement.
Friday’s season opener for the La Grange football team against Bellville will showcase two teams that go about the game completely differently.
“They are going to try to dictate the game with their offense just like we are – but we want to speed it up, and they want to slow it down,” said new La Grange head coach Kyle Cooper.
Bellville, which has run the Slot-T for years will be content to chew up the clock 3-4 yards at a time and piece together long drives. La Grange, meanwhile, in its first game with Cooper at the helm, will spread the field, forgo huddling, and try to force defenses into mistakes through haste. Cooper’s team last season in Ponder averaged 425 yards passing per game, but he says the Leps offense this year is more suited to more balance between run and pass. Any season opener for a new head coach is tough, but the Bellville match-up may be especially so for Cooper and company. Bellville coach Grady Rowe has been running his system with the Brahmas for 14 years now. Bellville was 11-1 last season and returns five starters on each side of the ball, including three guys who ran the ball a lot last season.
“Bellville, with that Slot-T offense, it’s a tough offense to mimic in practice, lots of misdirection,” Cooper said. “It’s tough to get a scout team ready.”
Defensively Bellville is led by 6-3, 305-pounder D.J. Sanders, who despite being only a sophomore has college scholarship offers from Alabama, Notre Dame, UT,A&M and bunches of others.
“He’s a beast,” Cooper said. La Grange is coming off a road scrimmage against Yoakum last Thursday. The Leps were outscored by the Bulldogs 21-7 in the timed half of football at the conclusion of the scrimmage.
“We did some good things, but we got exposed in a couple of areas,” Cooper said. “But that’s what I want out of scrimmages, to be exposed in areas we need to work on.”
Things get no easier for the Leps next week as they host state-ranked 3A Columbus, which went four rounds deep in the playoffs last season and boast Baylor-commit QB Adam Schobel.