H.S. FOOTBALL: Chester County wants to ride strong defense

HENDERSON – The 2014 season was one in which a lot of memories were made for Chester County football, and the Eagles accomplished a number of goals they’d wanted to for years.

It had been a long time since they’d beaten district power Lexington.

It had been a really long time since they’d beaten all their neighboring rivals from Lexington, McNairy Central, South Side and Bolivar in the same year.

They’d never won a district championship, nor had they hosted a playoff game.

Now what does the program want to accomplish?

“Now we want to build on that and see what we can accomplish as a team,” said head coach Michael Hodum. “We got that taste of a district title and a playoff game at home, but we didn’t really do anything with that opportunity.

“Now we want to get back to the playoffs and continue to build on that and see if we can put a long run together.”

The Eagles were the top scoring defense in the Sun’s coverage area last year, averaging about 11.5 points per game allowed in an 8-3 season.

“We’ve got a lot of those guys back this year, and we want to build on that and be even better if we can be,” Hodum said. “There’s a lot of experience there, but we’re missing some really good players who helped us be as successful as we were.”

The players that are back include Malcolm Tipler, who rotates back and forth between playing linebacker and in the secondary. He will probably be one of the go-to guys on the defensive side of the ball who can make a play when the Eagles need one.

Bo Morris is back at quarterback and has an arm a lot of college coaches would like to have in their backfield in future seasons.

The Eagles are one of three 2014 district champions in Region 7-4A along with Hardin County and Crockett County. They will play those two along with longtime rival Lexington, the team that eliminated them from the playoffs last year from North Side and one of Hodum’s former teams from Haywood.

“This region is so tough,” Hodum said. “There’s not a single break for us on our schedule with that region plus our non-region games against Adamsville and McNairy.

“We have our bye week after McNairy, and then we play eight straight region games. There won’t be many other teams in the entire state who will play region games in eight straight weeks. But we’ll do our best to be ready each week. That’s all we can do.”

Brandon Shields, 425-9751