Two unbeaten youth teams will battle Tuesday
Published 10:07 pm Monday, October 28, 2013
The Bears Tyshaun Freeman attempts to elude Cowboys defenders in a game earlier this season at Memorial Stadium. The Bears defense has let to allow a single point this season, outscoring their opponents 138-0 in six victories. On Tuesday night, the Bears will meet the undefeated Dolphins in a youth football showdown.–Daniel Evans
It isn’t often that a youth football game gets as much publicity as a high school or college game, but it isn’t often two youth teams meet with 6-0 records either.
That’ll be the case Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Memorial Stadium when the Bears take on the Dolphins. To add to the drama, the two coaches — the Dolphins Joe Dailey and the Bears Cajun Pritchett — work together at Bama Budweiser and have enjoyed talking a little bit of smack this week.
Dailey’s Dolphins are led by quarterback Edward Garner, who has scored 20 touchdowns this season, while the Bears have yet to allow a single point this season.
The Bears scoring is a little more scattered than the Dolphins, but the backfield duo of Tyreshon Freeman and Derrick Edwards Jr. have combined to rush for 13 touchdowns this season.
“Our defense is very sound and disciplined,” Pritchett said. “With a disciplined defense, you can go a long way. If everybody is on the same page, it is hard to score like that. If everybody is doing their assignments, it is going to be hard to score on our defense.”
The Bears have outscored opponents 138-0 this season, an average score of 23-0 each game. The Dolphins haven’t been too shabby either, outscoring opponents 156-50, an average score of 26-8 each game.
“We have been averaging about 30 points a game,” Dailey said. “He’s telling me that we aren’t going to score and I’m telling him that I don’t know how he can stop us.”
Dailey is in his seventh or eighth year coaching youth football in Selma and returned 10 players off of last season’s team — including Garner, who is now in his fourth season playing for Dailey. Dailey credits returning players as one of the reasons for his team’s hot start.
“My team is coming together,” Dailey said. “It just awesome. It is a feeling that you can’t imagine to be undefeated.”
Dailey admits that despite all the fun he and Pritchett are having, it’s hard to say what is going to happen Tuesday night when their teams take the field.
“We joke around and stuff like that but like I always tell him, these 7 and 10-year-old kids you don’t really know who is going to show up that game,” Dailey said.
Both coaches said their teams understand how big Tuesday night’s game is.
