Gators hoping to carry momentum into game with Jay Friday

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) -Will the momentum carry over? Wewahitchka head football coach Bobby Johns is hoping it will.

You see he and his Gators are working to prepare for a Friday game at home against Jay, the Gators coming in 4-4, the Royals at 5-3. Coach Johns and his team rallying a bit as of late. After starting the season one and three, the Gators have come back strong to win the last three games, including this one last Friday. That being a 26-20 win over visiting FAMU. Coach Johns telling me the loss of three starters, all who played both ways, before the season even began, well that took a toll on them early on, and his team seems to have recovered from all that here in October.

“It just took us a little while to get past that and move some kids around.” coach Johns told me via Zoom this week. “And you know, find a way to replace those guys. And then like I said we played a really tough schedule earlier in the year. We’ve gotten a little bit better competition as far as our opponents are concerned the past few weeks, people we match up a little bit better. And our kids have just kind of weathered the storm like we do every year, it seems like we have injuries that take place like this every year. And it takes us a couple of weeks to get past it.”

Give credit to coach Johns and his staff, he says they’ll dress just 23 Friday for the home game with Jay, with 6 or 7 of those being JV kids, the so called “six quarter” kids. And yet with a couple of of wins to finish out the regular season, well that should land the Gators a playoff spot. And all because the players continued to work through the adversity and continued to believe in their coaches and the process, says coach Johns.

”They remained focused and remained upbeat. We knew we had a chance to have a decent football team. We just had to get a few things to go our way along the way. In the last couple of weeks we’ve been able to put that together. We still haven’t played a complete game, like a really, really complete game. Liberty would have been our most complete game. The last two weeks we played good halves, we just not played real good in another half. But fortunately we were able to get away with wins in those two. But it won’t be that way this week against Jay, if we don’t play really good for 4/4 this ride will come to an end. " That game in Wewa against Jay set for 7 and is one of several we’ll feature on Friday night overtime.

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