By FRED CONLEY
T-H Sports Editor
If Forrest City Head Coach Donnie Willis has his way this football season, the Mustangs will be playing Cabot-like football.
Cabot, under long-time coach Mike Malham, has played what a lot of people like to call "smash-mouth football."
Monday night, during halftime of the Forrest City-West Helena preseason scrimmage game at Sam Smith Stadium, Willis was doing his best T.D. Jakes' impression by preaching "smash-mouth" football to his charges.
"Basically during the scrimmage we saw what we wanted to see," Willis said Tuesday. "We wanted our kids to play hard. We encouraged them to play hard. I want them to play smash-mouth football. Line up and hit someone...hard."
For the most part, the Mustangs delivered some well-placed hits defensively and the offensive line, which has struggled over the past two seasons, looked to be much improved.
But remember, this was just a scrimmage and the Mustangs didn't show their entire season game plan, what with the entire Osceola coaching staff, led by Forrest City native and former coach Clinton Gore, sitting in the stands.
The Mustangs will open the regular season on Friday, Aug. 31, against Osceola rather than beginning the year against long-time rival Wynne, which opted to open the year on Saturday, Sept. 1 as one of the participating teams in the Alltel Hooten's Classic in Little Rock.
Wynne will return to the Mustangs' schedule next season as well as Osceola, who will most likely replace Marianna.
"We have some things to work on before the season opener," Willis said. "But we all seem to be on the same page and unified. We are all just trying to get to the same place."
Willis said while facing West Helena's Slot I (one back) offense didn't offer much help in preparing for Osceola's Wishbone attack, it did give the kids a feel for where they are and where they need to be.
"I'm not sure we will face as good a quarterback in our conference as West Helena's Cary Washington," Willis said. "He is their spark plug and he is a complete athlete."
Even though no official score was kept during the scrimmage, the Cougars managed to take a two-point victory.
"We had our sophomores on the field late in the game," Willis said "and West Helena had their No. 1 defensive unit on the field. We could have put our starting offense back in but we wanted the sophomores to get some work.
"We haven't been preparing for West Helena. We're getting ready for Osceola."
By FRED CONLEY
T-H Sports Editor
The Palestine-Wheatley junior and senior high football teams will make their 2001 debut Thursday night.
Both teams will scrimmage East Poinsett County at Patriot Field.
The Junior Patriots will kick off at 6 p.m. and the Senior Patriots will follow at approximately 7:30 p.m.
Dan Cockrell returns for his fourth season with the junior high team while Terry Farmer is beginning his second full season with the high school team.
The Patriots are coming off a 4-7 season, but did make the playoff cut a year ago in Class AA, only to suffer a 55-0 first-round loss to Barton.
Farmer said his Patriots are "well ahead of where they were this time a year ago, but he still doesn't have a feel how they will respond in the scrimmage game."
In his first year last season, Farmer revamped the Patriot offense and defense.
The Patriots will open their 2001 season on Friday, Aug. 31, when they host Altheimer.
The Junior Patriots open the season on Thursday, Sept. 6, when they travel to Elaine.
The Patriots will play in the 3AA Conference against this season with Marked Tree, Salem, Rector, Earle, Walnut Ridge, Parkin and Cross County.
They have been picked to finish third in the league this year.
Other scrimmage games set for Thursday has Wynne playing at Lonoke, Parkin playing at Elaine, and Newport at West Memphis.
Preseason scrimmage benefit games continue this week leading up to next week's full schedule of regular season games.