By Robert Hudson

The Selma Times-Journal

The Ellwood Christian Academy Eagles football team will be looking to improve and capture its first victory of the season Friday night.

The Eagles (0-6, 0-5) will be home at Memorial Stadium when they face the Ashford Academy Falcons (2-4, 1-2) Friday at 7 p.m. in a region game.

Ellwood head football coach Mike Stokes said his team is still improving from week to week in its first year of 11-man football.

“We have gotten better,” Stokes said. “We played a good offensive game and defensive game (in last week’s 20-6 loss at Abbeville Christian Academy), just our special teams kind of let us down Friday, but we’ve gotten better.”

Stokes said the Eagles will benefit from playing at home, but they still have to take care of business on the field.

“It’s always good to play at home with your fans there supporting you,” Stokes said. “But you still have to go out there and play football.”

Stokes said the Falcons are a great running team with two running backs that can do some serious damage to opposing defenses.

“They have two really good running backs and they’re going to run the Wing-T,” Stokes said. “The good thing about it is we’ve got coach Lem Jones over here … he basically invented the Wing-T. He ran it for about 25 years, so we’re counting on him as defensive coordinator to stop it and put players in the right place.”

Stokes said, in order to have a chance to win Friday night, the Eagles will have to be disciplined and not get caught up in the Falcons’ misdirection offense.

“We’re going to have to play disciplined defense and not chase the ball down and then they come back with a reverse,” Stokes said. “Play disciplined defense and just play like we played last Friday and I think we can come out of there with a win.”