Saints look to correct mistakes before University Academy

Published 12:03 am Friday, August 28, 2015

NATCHEZ — Trinity Episcopal Day School head football coach Zach Rogel and his team didn’t watch the film from their 20-15 loss to Silliman Institute last Friday. Instead, the Saints implemented a new idea.

“There is a phrase we are living by, ‘Learn from it, grow from it and be done with it,’” Rogel said. “We moved on to the University Academy film. We knew the mistakes we made.”

But the film Rogel showed his team of University Academy wasn’t necessarily what they were hoping to see either.

Email newsletter signup

“It is definitely a different squad than last year, but they are just as athletic,” Rogel said. “They’ve got a bunch of athletes. We know they are a dangerous team. They are double our size, big, physical and fast. But we have embraced the underdog role.”

Going into the matchup, the Saints will likely be without junior do-it-all player Cade Wells, who suffered a knee injury at the end of the Silliman game.

“Cade hasn’t been practicing this week,” Rogel said. “We are preparing to go without him.”

Despite potentially not having Wells, Rogel has still set lofty goals for his team.

“We put some goals on paper that we think are going to help us get the win, such as minimizing penalties, we want no more than three offensively, no turnovers and having a balanced attack,” Rogel said. “We also want to score four offensive touchdowns.”University Academy enters the matchup off a 49-18 loss against Adams County Christian School, but Rogel said the game isn’t much to look into.

“I imagine a lot of teams will struggle against AC this year,” he said. “You can’t put too much merit into that. Trinity is a different team and we play a different brand of ball.”

Ultimately, Rogel said a win this week would be a big step in the right direction for Trinity.

“It would be huge, especially at home against a big ball club,” he said. “In the short time I’ve been here, we have some history with them. We took two butt whoopings from them last year and hopefully that brings a little extra to the table.”

Trinity and University Academy are slated for a 7 p.m. kickoff tonight.