James Wood looking for better trip to Brentsville

Last year when the James Wood High School football team traveled to Brentsville, the host Tigers weren’t very hospitable.

This fall, the Colonels will be returning, but they’ll have something they didn’t have on their last trip — a win. James Wood, coming off a 14-10 triumph against Warren County in its opener last week, tackles Brentsville (1-0) at 7 p.m.

Last season, the Colonels traveled to Brentsville with an 0-2 mark and things didn’t get much better. The Tigers converted four James Wood turnovers into scores and shut down the Colonels’ offense in a 42-0 romp.

That’s the kind of memory that can haunt a team, but James Wood coach Todd Wilson doesn’t believe that will happen.

“Probably for some of them it’s pretty easy [to forget] because we don’t have a lot of returning starters,” Wilson said. “There are a lot of new faces to the program. The guys who weren’t around or the guys who were on the JVs and moved up to varsity didn’t experience that loss. I’m sure for some who were juniors last year and made that trip down there remember it well.”

The Tigers, who knocked off Sherando 28-21 in Week 1, bring back a lot of skill players who had success against the Colonels last season, a campaign in which they went 12-2, won a regional title and advanced to the Class 3 semifinals.

Some of those players got off to a hot start in Week 1. Running back Nico Orlando, who had three TDs against the Colonels last year, rushed for more than 100 yards and three scores against Sherando. Quarterback Caleb Alexander, who rushed and threw for a TD against James Wood, ran 28 yards for a score and set up Orlando’s TDs with some crisp passing. Wyatt Vonderhaar had three catches for 95 yards against the Warriors.

“We know they pose a great challenge for us this week,” Wilson said. “They have a lot of athletes. As a coaching staff, we are pretty familiar with a lot of those kids because they’ve been in their program and putting up numbers for them the past couple of years. Their running back, their quarterback and their H-back (Langston White), they’re all good-looking kids. … Absolutely, it is going to be a tall task, but I think our kids are up for it and will give it their best effort.”

Wilson especially is impressed with Alexander, who is dangerous running and passing the ball. “He’s one of the better ones we’ll see all season long who can throw it and who can pull the ball and run it,” Wilson said.

James Wood’s defense is coming into the contest after a strong game against Warren County. Led by Zach Smith’s 16 tackles and Kaden McCullough’s eight, the Colonels held the Wildcats to 255 yards. They forced three turnovers and Smith’s interception led to the game-winning score.

“Defensively we played really well,” said Wilson, who did feel his players have room for growth. “There’s obviously some area we need to improve upon. You always want to shore up on your assignments and alignments. Every team wants to tackle better and we can improve in our tackling as well. Overall, I thought our defense played well.”

Offense is Wilson’s biggest concern. James Wood was held scoreless in the second half last week.

“Offensively for the past two weeks going back to our scrimmage against Spring Mills, we’ve done ourselves a lot of harm,” he said. “We hurt ourselves with pre-snap penalties. … That’s inexcusable. That’s mental focus and mental effort. Those are the things we want to fix.”

The other big thing was a case of the butterfingers. The Colonels missed several passes which could have resulted in big gains.

“We dropped way too many passes,” Wilson said. “Some of our guys I haven’t seen drop passes like that in all of our practices leading up to Week 1. I’m not sure what was the culprit or the reason behind it, but we need to do better catching footballs because our freshman quarterback Owen Neal played a good game. He would have had an even better game if we had done a little better job securing some of those passes.”

Elijah Richards paced the running game with 103 yards and a TD.

The Colonels will have to keep a close watch on White. The linebacker returned an interception against them for a touchdown last season and he picked off a pass against Sherando.

Wilson said to have a shot at reversing the outcome from last season, his team needs to focus inward.

“We have really got to take care of what we do,” he said. “We have to line up correctly. If we [don’t], it’s pretty simple for teams to exploit those type of things. … We have to continue to sure up our tackling. If one of those guys breaks a tackle, they have the opportunity to turn that into a big play or a touchdown.

“Offensively, we have to do a better job of catching the football and we have to do a better job up front sustaining blocks. We were getting to blocks, but we weren’t sustaining them last week. If we can do those things for ourselves, that puts us in a good spot to be very competitive on Friday night.”

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