By Connor Mullins

The Eagles (1-4) take on the L.D. Bell Blue Raiders (2-3) this Friday, Oct. 4, at Shotwell Stadium at 7:30. The Eagles lost their first district game last Friday against the Richland Rebels 35-34, and are hoping to get back on track in district this week.

            “We have to go 1-1 in district after this week,” tight end Colby Ernst,senior, said. “We can’t afford to go 0-2 in district. We have to get back on top.”
            The Eagles have to finish in the top three in District 3-6A in order to make the playoffs. Euless Trinity, San Angelo, along with Richland all won their first district game last week.

            “We gotta win. We have to take what we can from this game and go play our game and win,” outside linebacker Jorge Hernandez, senior, said.

            L.D Bell played Euless Trinity last Friday and lost 42-7. The Blue Raiders will be looking to get their first district win as well.

            “Start how we finish is a big thing for me because we always come out there in the first half and we don’t play our game,” Ernst said, “but we come out in the second half and really play our game. That’s a goal to just keep doing that throughout district.”

            The Eagles offense put up their biggest numbers of the year against Richland with quarterbacks Matthew Ezzell, junior, and Eric Abbe, senior, totaling for 222 passing yards. The Eagles also had 193 yards of rushing, which means the Eagles offense amounted for 415 total yards of offense.

            “We can improve on everything,” head coach Michael Fullen said. “We gotta play all four quarters and when we do that we’re a really good football team and when we don’t we’re not good.”

            The Eagles struggled to stop Richland’s quarterback Cole Benson, who finished with five touchdowns, meanwhile, the Eagles defense is looking to improve off of a lackluster performance against the Rebels.

            “We have to grind,” Hernandez said. “We gotta watch a lot of film to learn how they run it. Kind of like we learned how Tascosa ran theirs, but we’re gonna dominate this time.”

            L.D. Bell was one of the lower-ranking teams of the district last year finishing the season 1-9, but this season they have already won more games than last year, sitting at 2-3 going into this Friday night matchup.

“We have to keep grinding and playing our game,” Hernandez said. “We have to go 100 percent on every play.” 000000000000000