Orange and Eastern Alamance is only a football scrimmage about as much as the Grand Canyon is only a hole in the ground.
It’s become a tradition for the two teams, separated by only 13 miles, to face each other on the Friday night before the regular season begins. This year, Orange traveled to Mebane for the second straight year on Friday night. Inevitably, a large crowd hungry for football season gathers, despite the hazy summer sun lingering well past kickoff.
On Friday night, each team finished with four touchdowns, all scored by the offense. Elliott Woods scored two rushing touchdowns for Orange, while wingback J.J. Torres added another.
Panther senior quarterback Wyatt Jones hit classmate Machai Holt, in his first scrimmage of the summer, with a 5-yard out pattern for a touchdown on Orange’s first possession of the game, an opening drive that lasted over eight minutes.
After Orange played spread the past two seasons, new Orange offensive coordinator Marty Scotten has re-installed a variation of the double wing offense. Though it isn’t a duplicate of the double wing run by former head coach Pat Moser, it does put added weight on the running game with wingbacks Torres and Woods receiving plenty of touches on Friday night.
The games doesn’t count in the standings, but if anyone tells you they aren’t concerned with the score, they’re lying. On Friday night, the scoreboard simply kept track of time, unlike last year when Orange won 54-14.
In retrospect, that was the high point of Orange’s season in 2018. They were never healthy again after losing senior wide receiver Freddy Francis for the season only six minutes into the season opener against Northern Nash with a broken foot. Minutes later, wide receiver and defensive end Khaleb Smith suffered a knee injury, sidelining him for five weeks.
A week after a disappointing scrimmage against Person where the varsity offense didn’t score, Orange Coach Van Smith came away from Mebane cautiously optimistic.
“I liked the opening eight-minute drive,” Smith said. “I like three running touchdowns. I like how our passing game got better and better once we able to establish the run. A defensive player’s best friend is a running game on offense. The best defense is to sit on the sideline and drink water and watch the offense get the ball up the field.”
Torres, who played junior varsity last season, came away as one of the main players on offense. He ripped off a 46-yard run midway through the final quarter, leading to a 3-yard touchdown run by Woods. Senior wide receiver Zyon Pettiford had two catches, including one in the 2nd quarter that crossed midfield.
“J.J. and Elliott are just gritty and tough,” Smith said. “They just really lead by example and they’re guys you can depend on.”
Now, Smith wants to make sure that the Eastern Alamance scrimmage isn’t the shining light of the season again.
“We’ve been talking about that all week.” Smith said. “We had high expectations and sort of went downhill from there, and (Eastern) went uphill from there. We want to build on this and not sit back on our laurels. Hopefully, we’ll learn from last year. We performed well, but we still have to get in shape and cut down on mistakes.”
Usually, Orange would be in preparations for the season opener next week. But this year, for the first time in recent memory, Orange has a bye week during opening week. They will start their season on August 31st against R.J. Reynolds at Auman Stadium in Hillsborough.
This week won’t be an off week, however. There just isn’t a football game.
“We have to get in shape,” Smith said. “We have another week to do that. We’re going to work on mistakes. We’re going to add a few more wrinkles to the offense and a few more wrinkles to our defense. When the schedule got made, I wasn’t real happy about having a week one bye. I’ve never had that in my career. In hindsight, it’s going to be a blessing. Maybe getting it out of the way early will help us build momentum and it can continue into the season.”