Returning PLAS JV head coach Wes Allen said he and his team are eager for the start of the fall football season.

The JV team will start their fall season Aug. 25 on the road at Lee Scott Academy in Auburn, and Allen the team had worked diligently over the summer to nail down fundamentals.

“We’ve really worked hard and focused on fundamentals, blocking and tackling,” Allen said. “We are teaching fundamentals of keeping your head up and wrapping up on blocking. They’ve done a really good job doing that and I know that practice can be monotonous, but it’s supposed to be hard and the games are supposed to be fun. You work hard to have fun in the games.”

Allen said the athletes had grasped onto the team’s motto of “run the ball, stop the run and take the ball away.”

“If we can do those three things we’ll have a chance to be successful,” Allen said. “I expect them to play hard every single play. The thing that we as coaches have tried to focus on is to play hard every single play and get them to focus on their job every single play and to play until the whistle blows. When things go bad and things get difficult, we want to know how are they going to handle adversity. I hope they handle it in a positive way and find a way to get the job done. We work on it every day”

Andy Blair and Benson Stonicher will assist Allen on the coaching staff. Allen’s team is made up of 27 members. The seventh-grade athletes are: Marx Copeland, Landon Thrash, Bryce Betts, Sid Brown, Jeffrey Knotts, Scott Taylor Renfroe, Ramsey Tipp and Joseph Riley. The eighth-grade athletes are: Davis Allen, Holt Steed, Nick O’Brien, Eli Grice, Blake Laviner, Jackson Blair, Jackson Koenning, Brax Barron and Trevor McKnight. The ninth-grade athletes are: Bryant Hussey, Clay Barron, Trevor Barron, Max Copeland, Camden Koenning, Reid Johnson, Seth Lewis, Cody Hollis, Jade Sikes and Drake Adams. While the summer was hot, Allen said he is eager to see how well his athletes perform next Tuesday.

“I think over the off season we’ve had a great work out and conditioning program, so we’re coming in a lot stronger physically than we did last year. We’re in much better shape this year than we were last year. We have great speed on both sides of the football. There are still some shoes to fill on special teams, like our punter and our kicker. We have some kids competing for those jobs and competition has been good.”

Kick off between Lee Scott and the PLAS JV team is slated for 7 p.m. in Auburn.