After a big win over Danville to start the season, Clements had to wait a while before their next game. The Colts were off last week and will play their second game of the season Friday when they host 3A Region 8 opponent Colbert Heights.

Clements coach Cody McCain said his team spent the first week after their opening game not focusing on the next opponent, but looking inward.

“We saw a ton of stuff on film we needed to correct and get better,” McCain said. “We spent the first two or three days of practice just focusing on ourselves. We had two or three drives where we should’ve put points on the board, and we would’ve put the game (against Danville) away a lot earlier. Towards the end of (last) week, we turned our attention to Colbert Heights and got a couple of extra days planning for them.”

The start to Clements’ season has been a little start and stop, but beginning Friday, the team will get into a groove with nine consecutive Friday nights of games.

“We haven’t really gotten into a rhythm of playing games yet,” McCain said. “We’re trying to find a rhythm on offense. We feel defensively we match up well with our opponents, but consistently putting points on the board will be a challenge for us.”

Despite being so early in the season, the open week came at a good time for the Colts, who had two starters leave the Danville game with injuries.

“We had one guy with an ankle injury and another who had a nasty cut from a helmet,” McCain said. “I don’t really know if those two guys would’ve been ready to go if we’d played last Friday. They were able to practice at full speed this week and are ready to go. That was the silver lining in having a bye week.”

Colbert Heights comes into the game with a 2-0 record, having defeated Red Bay 14-6 and Phil Campbell 30-0. McCain is wary of the Wildcats defense against his team’s offense.

“For us, the issue will be scoring points,” he said. “We have to put drives together. Colbert Heights seems to play really aggressively on defense and likes to cause disruptions in the backfield. We definitely left some points out there in our first game, and we have to finish those drives on Friday.”

McCain said the key to stopping Colbert Heights will be containing their quarterback Dylan Chandler, who rushed for four touchdowns against Phil Campbell last week.

“He is a very mobile player and a good runner,” McCain said. “We’ve got to keep containment on him and limit the amount of times he’s able to get out in space and hurt us.”