How does a coach turn a great Thursday night football team into a great Friday night football team?
If that was a simple question to answer, Orange High would have had several state football championships by now. The Panthers haven’t lost a junior varsity game in over three years. At a time when some schools can’t field varsity programs, Orange continues to have healthy numbers for junior varsity just as they’ve done since the late 80s.
The transition to the next level isn’t easy. Some of the players who suited up for Orange during Friday’s 33-24 loss to Northern Nash had never lost a high school football game before. They had certainly never lost to a team that went 1-10 the previous season.
It was Orange’s first season opening loss since 2010, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising. The Panthers have only one returning starter on offense, four on defense.
Last season, Orange captured a share of the Big 8 Championship despite being held under 100 yards passing seven times. There was hope new quarterbacks Travis Ray or Wyatt Jones would make Orange’s spread vertical to start the 2018 season against the Knights.
Summertime 7-on-7 drills can’t adequately prepare a new quarterback for what he will face in the regular season because 7-on-7 games don’t have a pass rush, something that plagued the Orange offensive line and created endless headaches for Ray and Wyatt Jones on Friday night.
Yet that didn’t seem to hamper Orange the previous Friday against Eastern Alamance. The Panthers outscored the Eagles 38-21 in Mebane with Zyon Pettiford scoring two touchdowns.
So what happened against the Knights?
Things started unraveling immediately. Orange lost two starting wide receivers in the opening six minutes. Flanker Freddy Francis, a transfer from Cedar Ridge, injured his foot on the game’s second series and didn’t return. Slot receiver Khaleb Smith, who also plays defensive end, injured his knee after making a catch to convert a 4th down on Orange’s third series. He also didn’t return.
“With Khaleb, we didn’t want to take any chances,” said Orange Coach Van Smith. “It was a problem with his knee. It was just precautionary.”
It was also the theme of the night. Throughout the course of the second half, Panther after Panther left the game because of cramps or other injuries.
“We went from being a team that’s pretty deep with having any of our players playing offense and defense to plugging people in on both sides very quickly,” said Smith.
Entering Friday night, Orange had gone 67-13 since the 2012 season behind players like Bryse Wilson, Payton Wilson, Stone Edwards, Tay Jones, Ryan Sellers, Garrett Cloer, Marvante Beasley, Noah Rogers, Eryk Brandon-Dean and countless others.
Now, all those players have moved on. As with Northern Durham, Hillside, Southern Durham, Garner and every other program that has had success over several years, there comes a time for transition because that’s how sports evolve. Orange has just started theirs, but Smith has coached successful teams before coming to HIllsborough. He’ll coach more of them at Orange, and he isn’t ready to press the panic button after one game.
“I think going into next week, the guys know that they have to focus,” said Smith. “We had a long talk after the game that we’re inexperienced in a lot of areas. We’re young in a lot of areas. There are eight coaches on the coaching staff. What we need now are our older guys, who are experienced, to become coaches at practice and bring these younger guys along and help get them ready.”