The Tallassee Tigers showed out on Thursday at the Battle for the County 7-on-7 tournament at the City of Wetumpka Sports Complex. As a team, Tallassee has a swagger and confidence that is rare for high school programs.
Much of that confidence comes from their coach, L.A. “Lawrence” O’Neal, and the demeanor he demands from his program. Overall, O’Neal was pleased with how the tournament went and saw moments of promise from many players.
“It went smoothly,” O’Neal said. “Coach Woods always runs a really good competition, 7-on-7. We always feel the hospitality. From our standpoint as a team, I thought we could have played with a little bit more controlled emotion. We played well at times, and then at times we had a bunch of blown assignments.”
Tallassee is full of athletes who play on both sides of the ball, but they struggled with executing coverages in the secondary and that allowed their opponents to score in critical situations throughout the tournament. This summer, the Tigers have honed in on the details of execution. According to O’Neal some of those details still need to be ironed out before the season begins.
The Tigers showed the potential to score on big plays throughout the night, however some moments showed how emotions can get the better of some players, and that caused mistakes.
“When the quarterback was making the right reads and playing within the system,” O’Neal said. “We made plays, but when we started pressing and trying to play based on emotions of who we were playing, that’s where we made mistakes. So that’s one of the things where we just got to play within the system and take what the defense gave us and not try to force stuff to happen.”
Quarterback Trent Morris made some excellent plays that built momentum and resulted in touchdowns, but as the night went on more cracks showed in Tallassee’s play. O’Neal specifically highlighted sophomore Jaiden Gordon as someone who made huge plays for the Tigers.
“(Gordon) made so many plays offensively and defensively,” O’Neal said. “And then we had Braylen Rigsby that stepped up, he had a bunch of huge catches for us and every game that we played. Just to see those guys coming into their own, because both of them are (young). To see them make plays, it was real refreshing.”
Even with the moments of promise, the Tigers seemed to lose steam towards the end of the night. As the only Class 4A school in attendance at the tournament, most players in attendance played every snap on offense and defense. Tallassee sailed through the round robin seeding portion of the night, but faltered in the semifinals against Stanhope Elmore.