Vance County Vipers Head Coach Aaron Elliott was able to find something positive in last week’s 33-6 loss to South Granville High School, and that’s enough to keep him and the team focused on Friday’s matchup against the Jordan Falcons.
The offense racked up “a considerable amount of yards,” Elliott told WIZS’s Scout Hughes and George Hoyle. “We improved from the week before. We’re not where we want to be, but we improved offensively.”
Elliott said there will be a half dozen or so JV players traveling to Durham tomorrow, mainly because of some lingering injuries hanging around.
“I’ve never had the injury bug hit us like it’s gotten us the last two weeks,” he said. Zion Thornton is still nursing an ankle injury he sustained in a pre-season scrimmage, for example.
“Our main goal with him – and everybody really – is to get them healthy for conference time,” Elliott said.
But he’s not looking past Jordan, which he said is a good team with a solid coaching staff. They’re 2-0 in the young season, and Elliott said the Falcons beat two good teams – a 22-20 victory over Leesville Road and a 30-7 romp over cross-county rival Southern School of Energy and Sustainability (formerly known as Southern Durham).
“I’ve told my guys all week, if we’re prepared and (we) do not make mistakes – if we play a mistake-free ball game, we can definitely compete,” he said.
Keys to the game are making sure the players are playing assignment football and executing the plays.
“We’ve talked all week about executing,” he said. “I think we’ve got a good game plan, we’ve just got to execute. We’ve got to line up right defensively and we’ve got to do all the small things offensively,” he added.
The Labor Day Holiday meant a shortened week of practice for the Vipers, but Elliott said the team has had a couple of really good days. At the team meeting, Elliott and his staff addressed first thing all the missed assignments and alignments that hampered the Vipers against South Granville.
“We made too many mistakes,” Elliott said of his team’s performance last week in Creedmoor. “The very first play on defense we lined up wrong.” But he’s not one to wallow too long in what could have been.
He told his team not to let that game define who they are as a team. “We want to win. We want our best out there, but we have to think about us being healthy going in to conference play.”
“We built this schedule to make us better…the next three weeks are going to be tough,” Elliott said, but that’s ok because it will only help toughen up the team for what Elliott hopes will be strong conference play that extends through the regular season and in post-season play.
And, just for the record, the last time Vance County took the field against Jordan was in Elliott’s first year as head coach. After a lackluster first half performance, Elliott was able to rally his team for a second half surge and ultimately a W with a 28-27 final score.
“I’ve definitely learned, especially from that season, that these kids are going to fight to the end,” Elliott said. “Our kids didn’t fold.”
Vance County hosts Jordan on Military and First Responders Appreciation Night for Week 3 of the 2025 season on Friday, September 5th and you can hear all the action on WIZS 1450AM, 100.1FM, and online at wizs.com with pregame starting at 6:50 p.m. and kickoff thereafter at 7:00 p.m.
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