With the Pike County Classic quickly approaching, both teams are hard at work in preparation for the rivalry match up.

For Charles Henderson High School, however, head coach Hugh Fountain said the team’s focus is still getting better as a team, rather than trying to make changes for Pike County.

“We’re preparing for the season,” Fountains said. “Our season is kicking off, so we’re preparing for things that are going to happen to us over the course of the season.

“For us, our main priority here at the beginning of the season is that we try to get ourselves better. We try to get our team better so we can have a successful season as the year goes on.”

The Trojans have been trying to improve through both hard work at practice and a healthy dose of film study.

“We watch film constantly of ourselves,” Fountain said. “We film every practice, and we go back and look at it. There’s a lot of areas we have to get better in. There’s no doubt about that.”

Throughout the last few weeks of practice, there have been players that have made pushes for increased playing time based solely on their hard work at practice.

Fountain said it is those who work hard that will have a big role in how the season plays out.

“We’ve had a few guys step up and do a good job for us,” Fountain said. “There are some guys who maybe who we were not expecting to do as much. We still have five or six guys who are right on the bubble.

“They could come along and be key contributors for us this season, or they could just continue to be a backup that doesn’t get a lot of playing time. I told them that you never know the kid that’s going to be a spark. That’s what we’ll be looking for as the season goes on is some guy that does the unexpected and winds up doing something special for us.”

While Fountain and the Trojans are focusing on self-improvement, they have given some thought to what they might see from pike County Friday night.

“I’m pretty much expecting it to just be a regular football game, but you never know what you might see in the game,” Fountain said. We’re facing the unknown. We’re facing a team that has a new coach. Even though we know a lot about their players because we’ve played them for years, we only know Coach Stephenson from Citronelle.

“Being a new coach, he could come in there and do anything he wants to do. He could play any offense or defense, anything he wants to do.

“When you play a team in that position, you have to try and be prepared for whatever it is they might do.”