An explosive performance from the Caddo football team in last week’s lone scrimmage has the Bruin faithful brimming with excitement heading into Thursday night’s season opener.
The Bruins travel to Thackerville on the short week and will be aiming to pick right up where they started in an impressive outing in a combined scrimmage against Cyril, Central Marlow and Hollis. Caddo scored nine times offensively on the night while only allowing a pair of touchdowns against a wide variety of opposing styles.
“All three of them were good ball clubs,” said head coach Jeff Wigington. “They all had different strengths which gave us a variety of things to look at. Our defense did extremely well and our offense showed flashes as well despite us trying to stay vanilla as possible. It gave our kids a chance to go up against someone else to see what they could do. Central was very big up front and Hollis was really athletic. Cyril had a shifty quarterback that was difficult to contain.
“Like always in scrimmages, we found some things that we need to work on and address. We’ve made a couple of changes this week that should help, but overall it was a really good start.”
Wigington pointed to several strong individual performances on both sides of the ball that should help springboard another solid campaign.
Jake McKay accounted for three touchdowns and Cale Wigington engineered several scoring drives despite the Bruins not using much tempo offensively, which won’t be the case during the season. Jake Green also provided several big gainers in space with yards after the catch. Boen Proctor was also a playmaker on both sides of the ball while leading the defensive charge.
“We had a lot of skill guys that looked impressive,” Coach Wigington added. “Austin Lackey, Dillon Speers and Charles Phillips controlled things up front most of the scrimmage and allowed us to do what we wanted. We are definitely going to lean on those big guys.”
Thackerville returns to the Caddo schedule for the first time since 2021 and is coming off a tremendous campaign a year ago in which the Wildcats posted a 9-3 record. That was the club’s most wins since 2016.
They have a versatile quarterback with experience in senior Luke Foreman leading the way along with six returning starters on defense.
“Coach Barrett does a really good job over there and they will have multiple looks defensively, so that will give us some different things to think about offensively,” Coach Wigington said. “They are very active defensively and offensively, play the spread as well as also getting in the I-formation.
“It’s a good challenge for us. We have to be able to control the line of scrimmage and avoid turnovers. You can’t give up free possessions. We also have put a big emphasis on special teams. It should be fun.”