East Clinton’s Jade Griffith (70) with defensive coordinator Bryan Floyd. (Liz Schiff Photo)
East Clinton, like every other team in the area, had to battle the heat in preparation for Friday night’s home opener against Cedarville.
Temperatures were in the mid to upper 80s all week and with the humidity it felt more like 100 degrees much of the week.
”Unfortunately, the heat is one of those things that you just can’t escape,” East Clinton head coach Steve Olds said. “We’ll continue to stress the importance of properly hydrating and we moved the start of practice to later in the evening on Wednesday, but you can only do so much. We have to practice and we have to be mentally tough enough to grind it out and get better, no matter the circumstance.”
East Clinton (1-0) will host former Kenton Trace Conference rival Cedarville (1-0) Friday night with kickoff set for 7 p.m. in Lees Creek. Following East Clinton athletics or News Journal sports on twitter.com for any game-time changes.
”Cedarville is well coached and has a lot of key players back from last year’s squad,” Olds said. “They like to spread you out on offense and can hurt you with the run or pass. Defensively, they are aggressive and run a 3-3 stack look. We will need to control the line of scrimmage and be confident enough to make big plays when the opportunity presents itself.”
East Clinton opened last week with its first shutout win since 2014. The Astros defeated Huntington 12-0 in Chillicothe in the season opener.
“Our guys got after it,” Olds said. “It was a chippy kind of game and I think we fed off of that a little bit. They played with tremendous heart and effort and as a coach I think that is all that you can ask for.”
Olds was not happy with the turnovers and penalties, even though they did not decide the outcome of the game.
“We did have two turnovers and a long punt return called back due to a penalty,” he lamented “We’ll need to clean those up before it costs us a game.”
