By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
The Cabot Panthers are fresh off its biggest win of the young season, and have to guard against a letdown in this week’s homecoming matchup against Marion. The Patriots provide all the right factors for what would be a huge upset.
Marion is not young, but very inexperienced, and hasn’t played up to what coach Mark Uhiren believes are its capabilities. The Patriots have good size and speed that could be trouble for any opponent when it gets everything going.
“I’m just not very pleased right now with our progress,” said Uhiren. “We’re way behind where we usually are at this point because we have so many new players. When you’ve got some seniors that haven’t played since ninth grade, they’re like sophomores developmentally. We’ve got some good athletes, but we just haven’t been able to play a complete football game yet.”
Uhiren doesn’t go into the game with a defeatist attitude, but he is realistic given the disparity in school size between Marion and Cabot. Marion has 977 students in grades nine through 11 and a football roster of about 60 to 65 players, while Cabot has 2,258 students and a roster or nearly 100. The fact that this is a conference game bothers the head Patriot a little bit.
“It’s not fair, frankly,” Uhiren said of his 6A team being in a conference with four 7A teams, including the third, fifth and sixth largest schools in the state. “This conference alignment is not fair, and I just wish the AAA (Arkansas Activities Association) had to get kids ready to play these teams.”
On top of the mismatch in school and team size, the Panthers are playing better so far this year than they have since at least 2009. It’s a fact not lost on Uhiren, but a fact he admires, especially as a run-first coach.
“I knew that was going to happen,” Uhiren said of Cabot’s success this year. “The way he coaches, the demands he puts on his players. I love the way he coaches. He has a system and he sticks with it. He probably catches it (criticism) like I do for keeping it on the ground. The fact that he’s having that success this year just proves that when you get a group of kids that buy into what you’re doing, you can be successful. It proves it too to those kids. If they’ll buy in and give it everything they’ve got, they’ll be successful.”
There’s a slight wrinkle to Cabot’s dead-T offense this year. The Panthers have lined up with just one tight end and one split end. It’s a slightly different look, but one that Uhiren says is easy to adjust to.
“I’m not worried about the logistics of how to adjust,” Uhiren said. “Lanny (West Memphis coach Lanny Dauksch) does it like that too. It’s not much to adjust to. I’m more concerned with the speedster with the good hands he puts out there. That kid has made some good catches and he can outrun you if he gets behind you. That’s the part we’re concerned about. We’re definitely going to have to treat him like a threat.”
The Panthers and Patriots kickoff at 7 p.m. at Panther Stadium.
