WALL, TX— The Wall Hawks are under a new head coach for the first time in nearly 20 years and are preparing for a gauntlet to start the upcoming football season.
The Hawks scrimmaged the Early Longhorns last week and new head coach Craig Slaughter was impressed with his new offense, his experienced defense, and shouted out his entire offensive line.
Recalling the Early scrimmage, Slaughter said, “It was great, the kids look great. I thought we played as good as we can play. (We had) one turnover, but other than that we played really clean and it was a really solid performance on both sides of the ball.”
Slaughter is installing a new offense, getting away from a run heavy scheme and into the spread to get his players into space with the ball. Wall had the athletes to compete. Without Gunner Dillard at quarterback, the Hawks have two juniors in Caleb Braden and Landon York back there at signal caller.
Wall has plenty of weapons on offense with Haygen Barbee, Briggs Jones, Kellan Oliver, and Garrett Guy all ending up with significant carries outside of players who graduated.
Coach Slaughter was happy with his newly installed offense.
“So far so good,” Slaughter said, “We know there will be some bumps along the way but complements to our O-line, our coaching staff, and our kids. They picked it up great and I’ve been really impressed and I’m looking forward to watching us iron some things out tomorrow.”
One thing Slaughter did point out was his offensive line as the players that stuck out to him.“To be honest, the names I want to throw out… that offensive line, Hudson Braden, Boone Harris, Zach Welch, Reid Ballad, Baine Jenschke, Emmett Marlatt, those guys are performing at an extremely high level, and I’m just really impressed with them.”
The Wall defense has Slaughter’s fingerprints all over it. He had to rebuild it from scratch a few years ago and he built a monster. Last season, the Hawks gave up 126 points in 14 games for an average of nine points per game. The year before, Wall gave up 8.9 points per game.
In 10 district games, the Hawks have only given up 41 points.
Having guys like Brylan White, Ethan Michalewicz, Jacob Braden, Garren Wiggins, Caleb Braden, Weston Scandolari, Jones, Barbee, and the rest of the defensive roster means big things out of the Hawk’s defense.
There really is not just one defensive guy on the Hawks. Everyone does their job and does their job well.
“That’s very much more in place and they defiantly know what the assignment is,” Slaughter said, “I thought those guys played great, so good our safeties didn’t get to hardly play last week. I was joking with them this week, “I hope they get to make some plays’, in the future, they’re going to have to. But I thought our defense looked great.”
The Hawks have the Breckenridge Buckaroos coming up this week and open the season in Mason against the Punchers at 7:00 p.m. on August 30. That’s only the beginning as the Hawks apparently have adopted the “iron sharpens iron” mentality as after the Mason game, they’ll play the Brownwood Lions, the Jim Ned Indians, and the Monahans Loboes at home before heading up to the Mustang Bowl and taking on the Sweetwater Mustangs.
Read more on Concho Valley sports HERE!
Subscribe to the LIVE! Daily
Required
Post a comment to this article here: