Pigskin Preview: East Bladen looking to get back on track
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. (WWAY) — East Bladen football has had 16 winning seasons over the last 20 years, but those four exceptions have all taken place since 2019.
The Eagles went 5-7 a year ago, which isn’t where one of the most consistent programs across the state this century wants to be.
Head Coach Robby Priest says that some unavoidable factors played into that.
“We were fairly young,” Priest said. “Or inexperienced, every high school kid is young. We were inexperienced last year. If we would have had a JV team, those kids would have been playing JV. A year older, a year wiser, a year stronger. We’ll see how it goes.”
(Photo: Colton Emswiler/WWAY)
The good news is that East Bladen will have 15 returning starters this year. That includes seven on offense and eight on defense.
With only seven seniors, the underclassmen will be more experienced than most squads.
Representing this program matters to the players, who are determined to uphold the standard.
(Photo: Colton Emswiler/WWAY)
“We need to get everything down in the preseason and iron these things out,” senior running back and linebacker Dashon Campbell. “Iron our plays out. Go ahead and get in shape. A big thing was we weren’t in shape early on in the season, which hurt us a lot. We’re hitting the weight room more. We got a lot more seniors. We’re more strict on the younger guys and strict on ourselves, so we’re holding ourselves to a higher standard that way we can go farther in the playoffs this year.”
The Eagles will now be part of the Carolina Conference, but the athletes are focused more on taking the victory every Friday night.
(Photo: Colton Emswiler/WWAY)
“No matter the opponent, we can’t take no team for granted,” senior lineman Gereal Maye said. “No matter what their record was last year. No matter what their record may be coming up to us. We just got to go hard, treat no team no differently, practice hard leading up to each and every team every week.”
