Published: October 04, 2008 09:46 pm            

Costly loss

Injuries continue to plague Tigers in district competition

Brutal is an understatement considering the Tiger’s Friday night loss to Waco Midway. Especially when you realize the term loss isn’t referring to the district standings.

Before the fight song began and the smoke billowed from the front of the new tiger head, the Tigers were entering the game without starting safety and two player Tremaigne Dickson and without cover corner Calvin Glover. When the night ended, they were without starting safety Andy Means, starting wide receiver Matt Ward, and suffered the heartbreaking season ending loss to quarterback Cameron Young with a shoulder injury.

“I hate that we lost Cameron,” said fullback Brian Gregory who led the team in receptions with three for 21-yards. “He is a leader and worked really hard on making us a better team.”

The latter stages of the game saw starting linebacker Cody Evans at quarterback because the first three, count ‘em, 1-2-3, quarterbacks were out with injury.

It’s the kind of nightmare scenario that keeps coaches sleepless deep in the night, and I am sure Dave Henigan had a couple of those sleepless nights over the weekend.

Suffering a 43-7 loss on your homecoming is an insult in and of itself, but having the result of one game so potentially affect the rest of your season is another.

If you listen to the pundits and read the magazines, this team had a tremendous hurdle to clear with everyone healthy. That hurdle just became a brick wall.

“Tonight was a tough night and losing Cameron for the season is so disappointing,” said starting tight end Hank Kirkpatrick. “But the bottom line is that we are 1-1 in district and need to get to 2-1, and that’s how we have to approach next week.”

It’s rare to head into your third district game without knowing who your starting quarterback will be. The extent of the injuries will determine that answer. If healthy, will Henigan go with Dickson or Means? Will Cameron Cutrer be called up from the junior varsity? Will Evans be the man?

To look at the bright side, next week’s opponent Midlothian is not going to have much film on the Tiger’s starting quarterback. In fact, depending on who is under center, the landscape of the Tiger offense may not resemble the one that started the Midway contest.

The absolute key to the Tiger’s success this season was staying healthy and right now they have been bitten by the injury bug in an unfortunate way. Essentially having a two way starter go down is akin to having two players bit by the injury bug. A little middle school math will compute to an equivalent of seven Tiger starters questionable for next week and one starting quarterback in street clothes.

They say high school football is about building character for the kids. The coming weeks, regardless of the win-loss column, will not only build character, but test the current content of it for this bunch of Tiger players.

“We will not give up,” Gregory said. “We will stay together, keep working hard and put it all on the line week after week.”

        

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