Pender wins two games to be named Team of the Week

BURGAW, NC (WWAY) — This week our Team of the Week did something unprecendented by the teams we honor. The Pender Patriots won two games last week, 25-16 over Union and 58-0 over Lejeune, making them our seventh Team of the Week.

“It’s very good,” Pender Senior Lineman Treveon Kornegay said. “We just have to work together, play as a team and we’ll get the victory in the end.”

You can call that mindset the Patriot way. It comes from first year head coach Tim Smith. The Pats are now 3-3 on the season and just scratching the surface of how good they can be.

“It shows us what we can do,” Coach Smith said. “We’ve come close a lot and we’ve killed ourselves often in the earlier games with drives stalling in the redzone. These past two games we were finally able to finish drives and put it in the endzone.”

They finished nearly every drive with a touchdown Friday night against Lejeune. Lead by a backup quarterback and runningback Trevonte Devone, the Patriots came out looking like they had Tom Brady leading the charge. Coach Smith says the injury to their starting quarterback simplified their gameplan.

“We had to make some adjustments to the offense,” Coach Smith said. “A little less pass and having a singular focus probably helped the guys be able to go out and just know ‘we’re going to run the ball’ and change the mentality.”

Let’s not leave out the defense. For the second year in a row, the Pats shutout the Devil Pups to ensure the victory for the squad. It was simple on their end. They just did their job.

“I think we’re doing a really good job,” Pender Junior Defensive back Lavell Henry Jr. said. “The line is getting back into the backfield and penetrating and causing havoc. The linebackers are scraping and doing what they can and the defensive backs are staying shutdown in the zones.”

When you mix a strong run game with a shutdown defense, that gives you our Team of the Week!
Congratulations once again to the Pender Patriots!