MacArthur football coach Brett Manning met with The Lawton Constitution’s Kevin Green ahead of the Highlanders’ game against Lawton High at 7 p.m. on Friday at Cameron Stadium.
Manning discussed his final thoughts on the team’s win over Eisenhower, The Hammer, a new defensive tradition born last week and Labor Day festivities.
Week 1 debrief
Manning is still proud of his defense.
Mac held the Eagles to 83 yards total on 44 plays (1.9 yards per snap) and a 0-of-8 third-down conversion rate. It also tallied 17 tackles for loss and produced a blocked punt.
Disregarding Ike’s 72-yard touchdown in the second quarter, the Highlanders held the Eagles to a measly 0.25 yards per play.
The 10th-year coach said the defense did a great job containing Ike.
“I feel really good about our defense,” Manning said. “We were really solid in our game plan and our preparation, and the kids went out and executed it really well. I was really happy with everything we did defensively.”
Offensively, though, Manning said there were plenty of negatives to go along with the positives that helped Mac put 39 points on the board.
The Highlanders committed two turnovers and had difficulty moving the chains on third down, converting only once in eight attempts. They also went 0-for-2 on fourth downs.
“We did some things we really need to improve on,” Manning said. “We’re going to work hard this week to try to improve on those things and be a better offense. I feel like we shot ourselves in the foot a lot, and a lot of the drives were killed by our mistakes, whether it was jumping offsides or something that wasn’t necessarily caused by Eisenhower. But overall, for a first game, I was happy with everything.”
The Hammer
Matthew Santos, a junior, was awarded the coveted Hammer on Monday after coming away with half a sack and blocking a punt against Ike last week.
“He had a big hit and was pretty disruptive from his nose guard position all night long,” Manning said.
Last week’s Hammer holder, Dshaun Merriweather, led the team with eight tackles and 4.5 sacks.
Turnover chain
A college football program’s ideas can inspire even high school coaches living thousands of miles away.
Taking a page out of the University of Miami’s book, the Mac defensive coaches had a turnover chain created last week just prior to the season opener. The tradition started in 2017 when the Hurricanes began rewarding a giant gold link chain with the team logo on it to any defensive player who forced a turnover.
“I didn’t even realize they did it until it got delivered,” Manning said. “They went to our drama teacher here, Malinda Rust, and explained to her what they wanted, and she got a chain and letters that spell ‘Mac’, decorated it all up and had it delivered on Friday.
“We have so many people going both ways, we joked that if somebody gets a turnover, they have to just walk over to the sidelines and touch it real quick and then go back out on the field — they don’t get a chance to wear it. It was fun, and I think the kids liked it. I don’t think that’s the reason we had turnovers, but our turnovers were really timely and good for us.”
The Highlanders had three takeaways against Ike, all of which were fumbles.
Laboring on Labor Day
Although Labor Day is meant to celebrate and honor working people in America and is usually recognized as a non-working day, there are no days off in high school football.
Despite school being out, the Mac football team held practice at 9 a.m. on Monday. The early practice time allowed players and coaches to enjoy the holiday festivities with their families in the afternoon.
“Like my college coach always said, it’s Labor Day and we’re going to be laboring,” Manning said. “We have practice at 9 o’clock, our freshmen play Eisenhower at 2 and JV plays right after that, so we’ve got a whole day of football planned.”
Because of the busy Monday schedule, Manning celebrated the holiday with his family during the weekend in a variety of ways.
“I got up early on Saturday morning and got up here to get a lot of my work done so I could go home and watch the OU game,” Manning said. “My wife and I went over to the Rockin H Steakhouse in Temple, Okla., and that was really good. Then my daughter got baptized at Western Hills Church of Christ on Sunday morning, so we had a lot of family over last night to celebrate that — it was a good weekend.”
Stat leaders
Quarterback Racer Felter leads the team in both passing and rushing yards after one week of action.
The junior accumulated 231 yards — 143 passing and 88 rushing — and four touchdowns total. He completed about 64.3 percent of his passes and averaged 4.4 yards per carry.
DShaun Davis is close behind in the rushing category, picking up 71 yards and touchdown on 12 carries.
Michelle Artzberger is the Highlanders’ leading receiver, snagging nine passes for 79 yards. Javaughn Foster caught the only receiving touchdown last week, and he finished with four catches for 34 yards.