Finding out

MOREAUVILLE -- The Ville Platte High Bulldogs came into their fall scrimmage aginast the Avoyelles Mustangs and the Cohen College High Hornets with two missions in mind; find out who can play and don’t get anybody hurt.
After the three way scrimmage was complete and all was said and done, Ville Platte can call their missions complete.
With phase one of the 2019 season now complete, head coach Jorie Randle moves on to phase two; the jamboree.
“We are slowly finding out about ourselves,” stated Randle. “We knew coming in that our offense was going to be better than our defense simply because we have more players coming back on the offensive side of the ball. But, I thought our defense did a good job considering we played as vanilla as possible.”
Ville Platte began the scrimmage with their offense taking on Avoylles’ defensive unit. Beginning from the 30 yard line, the Bulldogs used only four plays to pick up their first touchdown.
Most of the work on that series came from returning running back Jahmal Byers. The shifty senior banged out runs of six, 21 and 14 yards on the first three plays. Ville Platte followed that up with a 23 yard pitch and catch from Terrian Roy to Ernest Roberts.
From there, the Ville Platte offense began to bog down. On the fourteenth play of the opening 15 play series, Roy hit Roberts for a 32 yard pass. However, the Bulldogs could not capitalize on the big play and could not punch the ball in again against the Mustangs.
“Terrian (Roy) looked like he had good command of the huddle and showed his leadership with the offense,” said Randle. “Jahmal (Byers) did a good job of cutting off blocks and getting the extra yards. For the most part the offensive line executed well, but we have some more reps to do with those guys.”
Following their first offensive session, Ville Platte’s defensive unit took on Cohen’s offensive unit. The Hornets broke a couple of long runs in the first two plays of their series, however, the Bulldogs buckled down and began to control the line of scrimmage. Cohen was unsuccesful in moving the ball any farthter than mid-field.
“Defensively, we won the first part of the battle, which is just lining up correctly,” commented Randle. “We just did not tackle as well as I would have liked. We are going to have to clean that up in the next couple of weeks before we take on Sacred Heart in the first game of the season. I was happy to play two run heavy teams to prepare us for the season opener. Overall it was a good physical scrimmage.”
Ville Platte did surrender a couple of touchdowns to the Avoyelle’s offense, but was able to score again against the Mustang defense the second time they took control of the ball with their first offensive unit.