By Justin Graves

Justin@athensnews-courier.com

SALEM – West Limestone coach Jeff Prince has been pleased with the work ethic his football team showed in the weight room during the offseason, but now he’s ready for the Wildcats to put all their hard work to use when they travel to Holy Pond Friday night for the season opener.

“There’s no doubt that we’re physically stronger this year,” Prince said. “But we’re really young as a team. We’re going through a rebuilding process and everyone here has worked really hard to turn the corner. We know these kids are going to turn the corner pretty soon.”

West Limestone’s youngsters showed they might be taking the next step in the rebuilding process last week in their preseason jamboree against Priceville. The Wildcats lost the game 30-20, but had several players do good things.

One West Limestone player that stood out was sophomore quarterback Wesley Hughes. Despite the Wildcats inability to run the football, Hughes was still able to find a way to move the football – throwing for over 250 yards.

“That wasn’t something we planned on going down there and doing,” Prince said. “But we couldn’t get our running game going, so we had to get the ball out to our receivers. Wesley stepped up in a big way for us.”

Now that Prince knows he has a quarterback capable of leading an effective passing game, plans to utilize Hughes’ arm more.

Prince said Holy Pond is in a similar situation as West Limestone, with both programs in a rebuilding phase. Despite the long road trip, he believes it’s a good game to open the season with.

“They’re a lot like us, with a lot of younger guys playing,” Prince said. “We’ve got to come out and be more physical and set the tone early.”

During the summer, Prince said the one area West Limestone needed to improve the most was on the defensive side of the ball. He said overall, the Wildcats had improved in that area, but isn’t completely satisfied.

“We’ve got to play better up front,” he said. “Our offensive and defensive lines have to do a better job than they did last week. They’ve got to do a better job of controlling the line of scrimmage.”

Sophomore lineman Austin Gillam said the Wildcats’ linemen started working on fixing the problem immediately.

“We watched the film at the beginning of the week and went straight to work,” he said. “All of the linemen stayed after practice Monday and worked on the sled. We got a lot of good work in.”

Gillam said the theme for West Limestone’s linemen this week is intensity.

“We have to get the intensity level higher,” Gillam said. “That’s the main thing we have to do this week.”

Raising the intensity level isn’t just the theme for the linemen, junior wide receiver Tommy Reyer said the entire team needs to raise their intensity level.

“Everybody here has worked really hard and come a long way, but now we have to get ready to play,” he said. “We had some let downs in the jamboree, so we have to respond and fix them this week in practice. It’s up to us to get the job done.”