{"id":411,"date":"2015-10-15T09:59:55","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T13:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2015-10-15T09:59:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T13:59:55","slug":"river-hill-football-working-towards-second-half-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/river-hill-football-working-towards-second-half-comeback\/","title":{"rendered":"River Hill Football Working Towards Second Half Comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"River<\/a><\/p>\n

By Dylan Mitchell, Editor-In-Chief<\/p>\n

After a 2-3 start to the season, River Hill is looking to bounce back in the second half of the season. Fans, don\u2019t be worried. Your Hawks are ready to turn this slow start into a successful playoff run.<\/p>\n

Right away, eight turnovers in five games stands out as a huge issue that needs to be fixed. Head coach, Brian Van Deusen said that after having five turnovers in the Wilde Lake game \u201cwe made some personnel changes at certain positions, and we have only had three turnovers in the last four games.\u201d<\/p>\n

To help make up for the turnovers being committed on offense, Van Deusen is \u201cstill trying to improve on forcing turnovers by our defense.\u201d For a team with only four turnovers forces on the season, resulting in a -4 turnover margin, causing the other team to give up the ball will set River Hill up with good field position for easy scores.<\/p>\n

Senior running back Jacob Howland, who leads the team with 445 yards on 87 carries, pointed to this as the exact reason for the team\u2019s slow start. He was the first to admit \u201cwe need to be more careful with the ball, less turnovers. Every game we’ve won we haven’t turned the ball over and every time we have we’ve lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once these changes were made, the team has only lost by an average of 7 points per loss. Each game, one more big play from the offense, a defensive stop, or one less turnover could have either won the game or given River Hill a chance to win at the end.<\/p>\n

The Hawks \u201chave a very young team, most games starting six sophomores. With each game we are getting more experience and improving\u201d according to Van Deusen. \u201cEach week we become more confident. As our younger players gain more confidence their level of play increases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with a plethora of youth on this year\u2019s team, senior captain Garrett Connors, a second-team all-defensive player last season who is ties for second on the team with 3 tackles for loss this season, is still running the show. He knows that \u201cto bounce back we have to execute our game plan and complete our assignments and that all starts in how we practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make sure all players are on the same page, Connors knows that \u201cas a team captain on a team that has a 2-3 start, I have to push myself and teammates every practice.\u201d To get back on track before the playoffs, each part of the game plan has to be executed, which all starts with the reps taken in practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had the toughest schedule of any team in the county so far\u201d according to Van Deusen, which should make the back end of this season a bit easier. For a team that has made the playoffs in 12 consecutive seasons, a bounce back everybody is expecting should keep the streak alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dylan Mitchell, Editor-In-Chief After a 2-3 start to the season, River Hill is looking to bounce back in the second half of the season. Fans, don\u2019t be worried. Your Hawks are ready to turn this slow start into a successful playoff run. Right away, eight turnovers in five games stands out as a huge…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[209],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-river-hill-football"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/008-RHvsWL-090415-X2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}