The Pam Pack is in the driver’s seat, now all it has to do is kept its foot down on the pedal.
After Washington’s 33-7 victory over Beddingfield last Friday, the Pam Pack (7-2, 3-0) holds a one-game lead in the Eastern Plains Conference over Farmville Central (7-1, 2-1) and Beddingfield (5-4, 2-1) with two games left to go in the regular season.
Despite Washington’s solid standing, coach Sport Sawyer has resisted the temptation to look ahead and has his team focused squarely on tonight’s 7:30 p.m. matchup on the road against North Pitt (6-3, 1-2).
“A couple of players mentioned (the standings) but we’re not looking at that,” Sawyer said. “We want to play the best football possible each week and let the chips fall where they may.”
The Pam Pack has played some of its best football in the second half of its games this year, but is still looking to produce that magic at the start of its contests.
Last week Washington found itself tied with the Bruins at halftime before exploding for 26 unanswered points in the second half to put the game out of reach.
Producing late game heroics is a trend that doesn’t exactly bother Sawyer, but he would like to see some first half fireworks as well.
“I like the way we’re playing as far as finishing games strong, but there is still plenty of room for improvement,” Sawyer said. “If you look at our games this year there has been a lot of seven-point or 13-point first halves, but in the second half we’ve scored a lot of points.
“We’ll take it as long as we keep winning, but I would like to get four quarters worth of points.”
Stevie Green was a point machine last week as he rushed for three touchdowns and threw for another. The senior leads the Pack with 13 touchdowns in nine games.
“We need our seniors to be leaders and Stevie in the second half of this season has been a leader for us,” Sawyer said.
So far this year Green has rushed for 855 yards, which is second on the team behind junior Markel Spencer’s 1,203.
While the offense has had its ups and downs, the defense has been consistently strong. Against Beddingfield Washington picked off two passes and racked up six sacks thanks to some creative alignments that placed Green, a defensive end, over the center and enabled him to run roughshod through the Bruins interior linemen.
Sacks might be harder to come by tonight as Washington will take on a run-first North Pitt team.
“We expect them to run the ball a lot and do a little play-action and defensively we expect them to load the box up. We’re expecting a physical football game,” Sawyer said. “Whoever has control of the line of scrimmage will have a big edge in this game.”