By T. Scott Boatright
Coming off a 34-0 home loss to Beekman-Charter last week, Lincoln Preparatory School football coach Chaunce Davison knows his team took a big hit in their confidence.
And that’s something he and his staff have been working on in practice this week preparing for a 7 p.m. home kickoff tonight against Jonesboro-Hodge.
Both teams stand at 1-3, but Jonesboro-Hodge does have the advantage of coming off a 42-27 win last week over Delhi Charter.
So, this week Davison and Co. have been working on their “mind game” as much as the physical part of the game.
And he admits the results have been a bit of a mixed bag.
“It’s been up and down,” Davison said of practice this week. “We’re just trying to get the guys to compete and trying to get them to challenge themselves daily. Win the day. Every day we come out here we’ve got to win the day. I need them to give me good reps every time they come out here.”
What Davison doesn’t want to see is a team that seemingly gives up on themselves before the final minutes tick off the clock as happened to the Panthers last week.
“We need to find the effort, give the effort to win,” Davison said. “I don’t want to be 1-3. I don’t want them to be 1-3. I just want them to play hard and give their best. Even if they lose, I want us to play hard. I want us to compete. I want us to get good reps and learn from them and keep going.”
And in an attempt to make that happen, Davison has admittedly been working to try and get into his players’ heads, starting with their mindsets.
“I’ve tried to fire them up, I’ve tried downplaying things — anything to just press a button to get them to buy in to that fact it takes work if they want to accomplish what they say they want to,” Davison said. “Make them understand that’s what it takes in life. In whatever they want to accomplish in life. It takes effort. It takes work. We’re talking to them and trying to get them to change their mindset. That was one of the main things we talked about early on.
“If your mindset doesn’t line up with your dreams, you need to change your mindset. If you have dreams of a state championship, or your dreams are to get a scholarship, then any negative thought that doesn’t match up with that, you’ve got to throw it out. Throw it to the side. If working hard lines up with me being a champion, then I’ve got to keep that thought. And I’ve got to embrace that thought. Talking back to a coach, does that line up with all of it? No. So I’ve got to throw that away.”
Davison said it starts with getting into the heads of his seniors.
“Don’t get me wrong, we have some kids, a majority of them seniors, who have the kind of mindset we need on this whole team,” Davison said. “But it has to be everybody buying in. I asked the seniors. ‘What do you need to do to make this team work?” And when they say what they said, then they’re kind of trapped with their own words where we can tell them, ‘OK, you said that, so let’s do it.’ Hopefully all the seniors buy in, because that will help get the younger players to follow and buy in, too.”
Davison said that if his Panthers don’t buy in, they could likely find a tough challenge facing Jonesboro-Hodge.
“They’ve got some kids that can run,” Davison said about what he’s seen in the Tigers. “(JHHS QB/SS Dakota Knox) is a pretty good athlete. He’s decent and has been competing. They have a talented slot receiver. They beat Delhi Charter pretty good last week, so we’re going to have to stay focused and execute from start to finish.”
Davison hopes his Panthers’ familiarity with the Tigers will make that happen.
“It was the same thing when I was coming up (as a student at Grambling Lab High School), you’re playing your cousins,” Davison said. “You’re playing your friends’ cousin. You’re playing your girlfriend’s cousin. These kids at these schools, a lot of them know each other. And I mean really know.
“So, you should come with an edge, a chip on your shoulder, when you play opponents like that. It makes it a game that’s important to win because of bragging rights. So hopefully that will be another part of our mindset this week.”
