Dragons Are All Set To Weather The Storm

After hitting the road the last two weeks, the Lake Placid football team finally gets to enjoy being at home.

The Green Dragons will take to Roger Scarborough Memorial Field at 7:30 tonight for the first time this season against Celebration, and the team is hoping to pull out a victory for the homecoming crowd.

"We're very excited about playing our first home game of the season," said first-year Lake Placid coach Jason Holden. "It's also homecoming, and that always adds a little more excitement to things."

The Green Dragons traveled to Liberty for their preseason game and fell to Fort Pierce John Carroll 14-0 in last week's season opener.

"We were on the road for the first two weeks, but it seems like a lot longer," Holden said. "Last week's game was pretty physical, but the kids have bounced back and we've had a good week of practice."

Celebration, which lost to Wildwood 42-0 last week, is 0-3 all time against Lake Placid and Holden is hoping his squad can record their first win of the season against the Storm.

"We had a lot of fire at Tuesday's and Wednesday's practice and we need to carry that into the game," the Green Dragon coach said. "It's going to come down to executing properly on offense and defense.

"We have the talent to compete, we just have to stay focused and play our game."

Celebration will run out of the I-formation and will also use a spread formation on offense.

"We need to play fundamentally sound," Holden said. "Everybody just needs to take care of their assignment and not worry about anything else. "We want to play team defense and force some turnovers.

"We've stressed getting some turnovers because we only had one last week and we need to force the action and create a short field for our offense."

The Storm use a 4-4 or 4-3 on defense and Lake Placid hopes to have success with its rushing attack.

"If we carry out our assignments, we can have success running the ball," Holden said. "We're a run first team, but we need to be able to throw the ball to give us better balance and keep the defenses honest.

"If we run some misdirection with the fullback, it should open some things up for us."

Green Dragon senior tailback Chevontray Wilson led the way last week with 68 rushing yards on 15 carries, while Caleb Jones added 22 yards on eight attempts.

Senior quarterback Zach Campbell completed 4 of 9 passes for 14 yards in last week's loss to the Rams, but has displayed an accurate arm when given time to throw.

"If we give Zach time to throw, he has the ability to make some big plays,' said Holden. "We have good team speed and hopefully, we can get our guys in open space where they can make some things happen."

Lake Placid has a bye next week, but a win tonight would give the team a lot of momentum heading into its first district game against Tampa Catholic in two weeks.

"We're looking forward to playing in front of our home fans, and it should be a good crowd since its homecoming," Holden said. "Homecoming week is always kind of crazy, but the kids are jacked up and we're looking forward to the game."

See highlandstoday.com/sports after the game for scores and recaps. See Sunday's Highlands Today for complete coverage, photos and reaction.

Green Dragons vs. Storm

At Roger Scarborough Memorial Stadium

TONIGHT at 7:30

COST $5