CHARLESTON, Ark. — After a pair of relatively down years, Charleston stormed back in 2020, riding an 8 game win streak to their first conference title since 2017. It’s back to business as usual as far as the rest of the 3A-1 is concerned. Rick May likes the sound of that.
“The good thing is, the kids here expect that. It’s a good feeling that the kids expect to win every week, they expect to go out and perform the best they can. We’re excited about that role, just want to make sure we’re there at the end.”
“They come out here and the main goal is to push us out of the way, but we just keep pushing and pushing until they back down,” adds junior Dale Smith.
“It’s kind of normal being Charleston to be honest,” laughs senior Clay West . “Everyone always wants to come to Charleston and take us down, but this year we’re ready for that battle.”
Last year, Brandon Scott came out of nowhere as a sophomore to lead the way at quarterback. This time around, he won’t be a surprise anymore, and May expects even bigger things.
“As much as he did last year, he can do even more this year. Just to lead the team a little more, last year he didn’t really have to be a leader, this year a leadership role is big on him.”
“I expect a lot, he was really good last year, really stepped up to the challenge. Brandon, he’s a junior, but he is a leader, and he’s very good, he’ll lead like a lot of seniors do,” adds West.
Of course, conference titles aren’t the end goal at Charleston, and West knows that.
“We kind of have to put last year behind us, ended a little sooner then we wanted to. This year we have to posses the right mentality, just come out swinging and go as far as we can.”
“It’s just going to take us being a little more prepared I think,” reflect May. “We weren’t really focused the way we needed to be, and that’s on me. This year hopefully we can be a little more focused and we can get over that hump.”
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