QUIENTELLE DUNN (33) LEADS THE WAY FOR JAREON SMALL Both scored touchdowns against Lakeside in the season opener last Friday. (Photos by MERCER HARRIS) It was sloppy both literally and figuratively. It was fraught with mistakes. But it was a win and, region game or not, it counts.

The Washington-Wilkes Tigers officially began their 2005 season last Friday night and though it hardly seems late enough in the year to be playing football, came home with a stimulating boost to their collective morale. Against AAAA Lakeside, whom they only managed to tie last year, the Tigers were convincing at 20-10.

RASHAWN RAIFORD RUNS on this 41-yard gain last week. Most convincing was the defense. W-W gave up only a field goal though the defense bent slightly in allowing the drive that set it up. But otherwise the defenders were staunch and Lakeside couldn’t even manage 100 yards of total offense. Their fluke touchdown came on a picked up field goal attempt that was returned 68 yards.

Offensively, W-W made some mistakes as is normal in a season’s first game but there was nothing that isn’t correctable. The Tigers’ four fumbles sounds discouraging until you compare that to Lakeside’s 11. (The Tigers lost only one of the four.)

CHRIS DEAN MAKES A GOOD RUN FOR THE TIGERS He was the teams leading rusher with 58 yards against Lakeside. But three different running backs had runs over 40 yards and passes were generally on the money even though the receivers had a little trouble hanging on.

“It was a good way to start,” Head Coach Russell Morgan commented. “It was kind of sloppy but it’s one in the Ws.”

In talking about the game, the coach first turned to the team’s selected players of the week, citing Demont Gresham as “definitely the defensive player of the week.”

Gresham was the Tigers’ leading tackler with 10 tackles, had three fumble recoveries, and two tackles for losses. “Every time he turned around he was in the right place,” Morgan said.

Quarica Smith was offensive lineman of the week. “He’s a heck of a center now and he graded out as our highest lineman for the game,” Morgan said.

Also offensively, Chris Dean was the running back of the week. “He did a great job blocking and was also our leading rusher,” Morgan reported. Dean had 58 yards on seven carries for an impressive average of 8.2 yards per carry.

Kevin Stasyshyn was special teams player of the week as punter with an equally impressive average of 40 yards on six punts, the longest of which was 52 yards.

Commenting on the Tigers’ defense against Lakeside, Morgan said, “The only drive they really had was their second series when they gained some yardage and kicked a field goal. Other than that I though our defense played pretty darn good.”

Indeed, that one drive accounted for 69 of Lakeside’s yards which leaves only 21 for the rest of the game. And in the second half, the Tiger defense actually held the Panthers to negative seven yards rushing.

“The quarterback they had can really motor and by containing him we did pretty well,” Morgan said. “He was the fastest player on the field.”

On the other side of the ball, Morgan was not satisfied with his team’s play but neither was he especially disappointed.

“It always takes a little bit for the offense to catch up with the defense,” he said. “We had several busts. There were several plays where we were one block away from something great happening.

“We’ve just got to cut down on errors,” the coach continued. “Errors are to be expected in the first game even though you don’t want to accept it as a coach. You do your most improvement in the first three weeks and we are going to try to get some things corrected this week.”

There has been plenty of discussion around town about the wet field at Lakeside, how it got that wet, and what effect it had on the game. “They said they had had a ton of rain the night before,” Morgan reported, but elsewhere there was some speculation that the sprinklers had been turned on to wet it down. Whatever the case, the conditions were so sloppy that in the third quarter, radio announcers were unable to identify players because their jerseys were so messy.

Scoring for W-W were Gresham on a three-yard deflected pass reception; Quientelle Dunn on a one-yard plunge in the third quarter; Jareon Small on a nice 44-yard jaunt late in the game; and two PATs courtesy of Mark Tench.

This Friday night the story is going to be different. Though AAA Thomson is a class down from AAAA Lakeside, the Bulldogs have one of the strongest football traditions in the state and they have the athletes to carry it forward in 2005.

“Thomson is huge. It’s going to be quite an uphill battle,” Morgan lamented. “They probably average about 280 on the offensive line and there are probably three of them in the 300 pound range,” he said.

The Thomson quarterback, Anthony Erwin (No. 4), “can motor” and the tight end, Arcephus Jones (No. 81) is supposedly one of their best blockers and weighs about 310.

“They don’t throw the ball a whole lot. I think they threw it a total of three times in the last two years against us,” Morgan remembered. “They called two pass plays but the quarterback ran last week when they beat Elberton 14-0.”

But if Thomson is good on offense, the Defensive Dogs may be even better. Calling them “awesome,” Morgan reported that they haven’t given up a point in two jamborees or the first game and they haven’t given up many yards at all.

“The biggest advantage they have on us other than size is the fact that nobody plays both ways,” Morgan said. “They just wear people down – against Elbert it was 0-0 until late in the game and they just wore them down. I think they are better than they were last year.”

It is a coach’s job to build up the other team and cry about how good and big they are when his own team is talentless and puny. Morgan was not that way. In fact, he was actually the least bit hopeful about going into game number two for 2005.

“Defensively, if we can hold them close we may have a chance if we get some breaks,” he said.