WS Chronicle

The Parkland Mustangs varsity team rode into their game against Mt. Tabor ona 10-game winning streak. The streak was snapped as the Spartans took it to the Mustangs early and often on their way to a 49-7 victory.

Aided by the six combined touchdowns from quarterback JaQuan Albright, and coupled with the defensive gameplan from head coach Tiesuan Brown, the Spartans gained a share of the Piedmont Triad 3A Title with the victory. The Spartans are trending up after losing four of their first five games of the season.

“We go into every game expecting to win, but the intention going into that game was to dominate at all times,” said Albright.  “We executed in all three phases of the game and came out with the win.”

The Spartans jumped on the Mustangs right from the start. Before the first quarter ended, Parkland was already looking up at a 21-point deficit. Albright says they just wanted to get off to a good start and carry that momentum throughout the game.

Albright went on to say the fact that Parkland came into the game with an undefeated record gave them some extra motivation. He said the Spartans felt like the Mustangs came in the game a little overconfident.

“That added a little fuel to the fire and I told my team that we aren’t going to do any talking, we are just going to let our play speak louder than our words,” Albright said about the Mustangs undefeated record.

As a defensive-minded coach, Brown says he wanted to make sure his defense stopped the Mustang running game. He said if they were able to do so, his scheme would take care of the pass. On offense, he said he noticed the Mustangs were vulnerable to the run, so they wanted to exploit that weakness.

“They couldn’t run the ball with five in the box and at that point we were able to throw different coverages at Camian (Shell) to keep him off balance,” Brown said. “Our defensive line did a great job of containing them and after watching the film this morning, he didn’t have anyone to throw the ball to because everyone was covered.”

The plan coming into the game was to contain Shell, Brown said. After watching film, he noticed that Parkland gets a lot of their big plays on improvisations by Shell, so containing him was key.

“The plan was to contain, because a lot of people try to blitz him and he is good at making people miss and breaking contain, so he has that run or pass option,” Brown continued. “I talked to the guys all week about taking that away from him and keeping him in that box.

“Sometimes we dropped seven or even eight into coverage and sometimes we blitzed four or five and that kept him off balance. He never felt comfortable.”

Brown says he and his team wanted to make a statement Thursday night. With their 1-4 start going into conference play, he knew his team was better than their record showed.

“We had a couple of hiccups during the early part of the season, because we are such a young team,” he said. “We still felt like we were a good team and a lot of people don’t know this, but we are undefeated in the conference on JV and varsity, so we felt like we had a good chance to come in a win.”

According to Brown, the biggest improvement on the team was made by the offensive line. He says they have finally gelled as a unit and have been opening up big holes for the running backs, while also giving great protection to Albright.

Albright and Brown stated that everyone jumped off the bandwagon after their slow start to the season. Albright says he even heard the negative comments from his own student body, but says his teammates never lost the faith.

The Spartans are undefeated in conference play and can win the Piedmont Triad 3A title outright with a win against Dudley tomorrow. Brown says it is important to win the conference, but they want to have a home playoff game.