The good news for the Southeast Bulloch Yellow Jackets is they’ve had an extra week to prepare for their region opener this Friday night in Savannah against Islands.
The bad news is they’ve had an extra week to remember their season opening 21-10 loss to the Statesboro Blue Devils. Head coach Jared Zito feels the biggest thing over the past two weeks has been correcting the mistakes that were made during the Statesboro game.
“We have been watching the Statesboro film and have tried to correct anything we can,” Zito said. “The thing about watching game film is the eye in the sky doesn’t lie. We can tell the kids what they did wrong but I feel like when they actually see it themselves it hits home more. I think we have learned from watching the film.”
Most coaches would prefer to not have a bye week this early in the season but Zito said the bye week actually came at a good time.
“It was actually great timing for us to have a Friday off,” Zito said. “We had a lot of sickness in our program. We had players and coaches out for a few days last week. If we would have had to play last Friday it would have been a little tough. The good thing is that has kind of come and gone and we go into this week’s game pretty healthy.”
This Friday, the Jackets open region play in Savannah against Islands. Last year Southeast Bulloch beat Islands, 43-7, in Brooklet as Islands ended up going 0-10 on the season. The Sharks have lost 35 straight games, which is the third longest active streak in the state of Georgia. This year, the Sharks come in off of a bye week as well. Two weeks ago, Islands lost their season opener, 43-21, against McIntosh County Academy.
“The game is about execution and doing what we do better than we did in week one,” Zito said. “What that looks like is doing what you are coached to do play after play. It is a region game and, of course, we want to win, but the key is to just play more like we practiced. Islands has a few pretty good-looking athletes and played tough in their opener. If we play the way I know we can, we should come out successfully, but we can’t have the kind of mental errors we had two weeks ago.”
