CCA prepares for football home opener against Lane
Published 10:50 pm Thursday, September 3, 2015
By Justin Fedich | The Selma Times-Journal
The Concordia College Alabama Hornets (0-1) play their first home football game of the season against Lane College (0-0) Saturday at 2 p.m. Lane College travels from Jackson, Tenn., and is coming off a one-win season. Concordia is hoping its first win of the season comes Saturday.
With over 50 players on its roster, Concordia is still in the process of naming starters at certain positions. Most notably, the quarterback job is going to be up for grabs against Lane.
Freshman James Crosby and junior Jarvis Chambers will both see playing time at quarterback Saturday, and head coach Stanley Conner plans on naming a starting quarterback along with starters at other positions after this weekend’s game.
“After this week, we’ll kind of have a better idea of how our team is going to perform,” Conner said.
Lane returns its leading tackler Will Lacy and Gabriel Mass, who led the team in sacks. The Dragons also have a strong returner in Darius Mitchell and a talented offensive lineman in D’Mon Tucker. All four were named to the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference preseason all-conference team.
Last week, turnovers and penalties prevented Concordia from keeping it close against Warner University, as the Hornets lost 34-3. Their only points were scored by freshman kicker Pablo Grajales.
Conner said he has been impressed from what he’s seen from his young kicker so far.
“Being a freshman, I think he’s shown a whole lot of poise throughout the year handling the kicking,” Conner said.
Conner is looking forward to having more time to prepare his players this week since they don’t have to travel for this week’s game. Although the players came into the season with background in football, many have not played together as a team before.
There was also a large number of players who hadn’t played college football before this season.
“A lot of those players have played before at a high level, but it just takes time,” Conner said. “You have to practice and you have to play. So we’re just hoping that the process is going to take care of itself.”
While Conner is still figuring out his final starting lineup, he is still expecting a much stronger performance from last week. The Hornets may be behind schedule from where they would have hoped to be, but they have still played one more game than the Dragons.
“I think we’ll be a little bit more prepared and there’s nothing like game experience,” Conner said.
“We had a game last week, but I just look to improve every week.”