PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — Curon Cordon’s receiving debut with Hurricane was on display Saturday as the Redskins scrimmaged at Parkersburg South.
It was just one of many around the state this weekend as Week 1 of the season quickly approaches.
Cordon, a senior, transferred to Hurricane back in January after finishing his junior year with 47 catches for 900 yards and nine touchdowns at South Charleston.
“Curon made a couple of nice catches and Dakota (Williams) had a nice touchdown catch,” said Hurricane coach Jeremy Taylor. “We already knew that Christian Hill and Payton Lunsford could run the ball pretty well — so we threw a lot today, probably more than we will in the regular season.
“But you have to work on things that you don’t do well,” he continued. “Coming into today, I didn’t think that we threw the ball very well. But I think we got a lot better today and we took a big step forward.”
The Redskins have been working junior Nathan Roy and sophomore Austin Womack at quarterback with the eventual starter replacing the graduated Dylan Plumley.
“I think both quarterbacks are pretty even,” Taylor said. “We have two quarterbacks battling for it and both of them made some good plays. Both of them also made some mistakes – and that drives you crazy. But I was pretty pleased with the effort, guys were getting around the ball.”
Despite just the two returning starters offensively, there is plenty of depth and returning experience defensively — a group that lost just three starters and returned 15 players with varsity playing experience.
Part of that defensive strength includes 6-foot-2, 215 pound junior linebacker J.T. Cooper who had the biggest hit of the day on Saturday.
“(J.T.) Cooper, (linebacker) Payton Lunsford and (defensive end) Steven Shine – you’re not going to face better linebackers or a defensive end than those guys and we go up against them every day in practice,” Taylor continued. “Defense wins championships – it’s not just a saying, it’s true. Offensively, we’re still behind.
“We’re not expected to do much this year – we’re expected to go 4-6 or 5-5, and that’s fine,” Taylor said. “But this team saw what last year’s team did unexpectedly. The big difference this year, at this point, is our youth on the offensive side, but we do have a lot more speed. We have five or six guys who can flat out fly.”
While Hurricane’s first team came away with more points scored Saturday, Parkersburg South is looking to get back in the playoff mix with a bunch of youth, itself.
“We have a lot of guys who don’t have a lot of full-speed game experience,” said Parkersburg South coach Mike Eddy. “A lot of our experience is practice and games are a completely different speed. We’re still trying to figure out who our ones, twos and threes are.
“We wanted to see how our quarterbacks did under pressure. We’ve also got to do a lot of improvement in our run game, and we were extremely inconsistent there today.”
Hurricane opens the season at home against Winfield, while Parkersburg South visits Ripley.