Tag Archive for: #highschoolfootball

Vance County High School

SportsTalk: Vipers Take An Unexpected Week Off

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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th 

The Vipers of Vance County are having a good football season so far as we are officially over halfway through the 2024 campaign. Head Coach Aaron Elliott joins SportsTalk on WIZS to talk all about it.

Coach Elliott first off gave us his thoughts on the 38-33 wins against Louisburg. “A couple of things that we liked and improved on was our offense. We were able to put together a pretty complete offensive game where we had 500 total yards of offense and five touchdowns so we had a really good game offensively. Some things that we didn’t like we gave up some big plays on defense. That just came down to missed assignments.” The Vipers had three different rushers go over for 100 yards in the game against the Warriors. Javion Vines-Holder and Antoine Doyle Jr with 117 yards each, while Jontavious Nile with 171 yards for the night. Nile is now Top-30 in the state of North Carolina in rushing with over 700 yards and 10 touchdowns. “We knew he was going to be a workload for us and he’s really done a great job for us.”

With no game this week, Coach Elliott will turn into a scout as he will head to Creedmoor as South Granville hosts Southern Durham in a Northern Lakes Conference matchup. “I plan on being there that way we can do a little scouting on South Granville and actually cheer for them a little bit.” The Viper’s next game is at South Granville, on October 11th.

The game between Vance County and East Rutherford has been canceled this week due to Hurricane Helene impacting the western part of the state where East Rutherford would be coming from. Vance County was supposed to have a Hurricane Relief Rally during the game on Saturday, but Coach Elliott says that if anyone wants to bring their supplies for donation, they can bring their supplies to Vance County High School anytime during the week and the weeks ahead. Vance County High School is located at 925 Garrett Road here in Henderson.

Even though the game has been canceled for this Saturday, there is still football in Vance County this week at least. The Vance County JV Vipers host Wake Prep and their JV squad tonight here in Henderson. Coach Elliott gives us his insight on what impresses his JV Team the most this season. “I like to go watch and play… it’s how aggressive they are on plays. How they get after the ball on defense, they’re flying around making plays, they tackle well. And I always think about that because you know the JV is your future. The JV, they’re good you know, they’re winning the conference right now so we’re pretty excited for them.”

Coach Elliott’s message for the fans coming to the JV game tonight is to, “Just come out and support. Although the Varsity game was canceled, it gives us some way to come together and watch a little football, especially this week.”

We are right behind you Coach! Go Vipers!

The next time Vance County will take the field is when they travel to Creedmoor to take on South Granville for Week 8 of the 2024 season on Friday, October 11th 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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Vance County High School

SportsTalk: Vipers Take On Louisburg

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UPDATE – FINAL SCORE 

Vance County 38 

Louisburg 33 

RECAP MONDAY ON SPORTSTALK 

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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th 

Scout Hughes and George Hoyle give their takes on the Vance County vs. Louisburg Football game tonight. The guys also give their college picks for the weekend.

Vance County travels to Louisburg for Week 6 of the 2024 season on Thursday, September 26th 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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SportsTalk: Interview with Louisburg High School Head Coach Dontae Lassiter

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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th 

As we approach another week of high school football in the Tar-Heel State, two teams, two high schools, two counties side-by-side. Vance County will travel to Louisburg to take on the Warriors who have a respectable winning record so far in 2024.

To start off SportsTalk, Scout Hughes and George Hoyle spoke about the history of teams from Vance County vs. Louisburg High School. These schools have played each other a total of 32 times, based on research from WIZS. That number may seem small compared to some of the other schools that Vance County has played in their existence. George gave a good reason for this, “At least from the mid-70s on, Louisburg was a 1A school up until a few years ago…They were 1A when I was growing up…Vance County never played Louisburg.” It wasn’t common for Vance, a 4A school in the 80s, to play a 1A school like Louisburg. This all-time series starts way back in 1923 when Henderson played Louisburg and won 45-6. Henderson and Louisburg would play again in 1924. After that, a team from Vance County would not play Louisburg until 1993 when the Warriors defeated Southern Vance 34-0. Between Northern and Southern Vance, the Vikings and Raiders played Louisburg a total of 29 times.

The 2024 edition of Vance County vs. Louisburg offers a different set of circumstances. The game has been moved to Thursday as opposed to Friday due to weather conditions that are expected to fall on Friday.

After reminiscing the history between the two squads, Louisburg Head Coach Dontae Lassiter joined SportsTalk to preview the game between the Vipers and the Warriors. Coach Lassiter likes the way his team has performed so far given their winning record. “Our defense has been getting better every game. Offensively we lost a lot last year, lost a lot of our touchdowns to graduating seniors. They’ve improved. I like our youth.”

Going into this week Coach Lassiter has stated that he’s looked at Vance County’s film and has high marks for the Vipers, “They’re extremely athletic. Physical team. Like I said their quarterback is pretty good. He is a tough kid to contain. They’ve got a good running back, he’s a downhill runner. They’ve got a few good receivers that they can toss the ball to. Offensively they’re really good, in all facets. On defense, they’ve got some dudes as well…If we do what we’re supposed to do and play a good game, we may be able to contain them.”

To sum it all up, Coach Lassiter gave us his keys to beating Vance County on Thursday, “We need to play probably I say two halves of football. I don’t think we’ve done that this year. We played only maybe one half of football in every game we played in and that’s kind of evident with some of the scores. Some of the games we lost I think if we could’ve played both halves we would have won those games too. We’ve got to contain their athletes and their explosive plays. On offense, we got to find a way to get the ball in the endzone, and eat a little clock as we do it.”

Louisburg Head Coach Dontae Lassiter has a message to his Warrior fans for Thursday night, “Come out and cheer us on and we’re going to try to get it done.”

Coach, we will see you then!

Vance County travels to Louisburg for Week 6 of the 2024 season on Thursday, September 26th 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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SportsTalk: Vance County vs. Orange Football Game Recap

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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th

Doc Ayscue and Scout Hughes recap Vance County’s win this past Friday against Orange.

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SportsTalk: Vance County’s Coach Elliott Previews Rocky Mount Game

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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th

Scout Hughes and George Hoyle talk with Vance County Head Football Coach Aaron Elliott as they prepare for Rocky Mount on Friday night.

Vance County travels to Rocky Mount for Week 2 of the 2024 season Friday, August 30th 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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SportsTalk: Vance County vs. Warren County Football Game Recap

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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th

Doc Ayscue and Scout Hughes recap Vance County’s win this past Friday against Warren County.

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SportsTalk: Vance County’s Coach Elliott talks Warren County Game

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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th

With football season in the Tar Heel State ramping up tomorrow night, high schools all across the state are looking forward to finally getting back on the field for the 2024 campaign. Vance County’s head man Aaron Elliott joins SportsTalk with Scout Hughes and George Hoyle to talk about Vance County’s matchup tomorrow night against Warren County.

Coach Elliott feels better about the season opener against the Eagles now that they have a few scrimmages under their belt. “At the Jordan Scrimmage we made a lot of mistakes mentally. Just as for like not lining up right and just being in a bad position to make plays. I told the kids after the game, if we would’ve done everything right, it wouldn’t have given us anything to work on going into the season. It really helped us expose some of our weaknesses against a good team.”

Even though Coach Elliott is in his second season at the head of the Vipers program, he has had a lot of encounters with Warren County Head Coach Victor Hunt. “We’ve been playing each other for just about my whole coaching career. Even when I was at Louisburg, we played Warren County every year. Coach Hunt has a big respect from us. He does a good job with low numbers each year. We’ve played some tight ball games back and forth. With this rivalry, at the end of the day it’s like Duke and Carolina.”

Week 1 starts a season of what could be a great year for Vance County. Especially after achieving the first 10-win season by any team from Vance County since Southern Vance won 13 games in 2007. Coach Elliott wants Vance County to go to higher heights in 2024 and beyond. “We’ve been talking about it ever since the end of the year last year, you know having a championship mindset. That’s been our main goal and main focus coming into this season, thinking about the future a little bit. Thinking about what we gotta do to be able to compete for a state championship. We’re not satisfied after the end of last season with Terry Sanford knocking us out in the first round. It put a sour taste in our mouths.”

In preparation for Warren County on Friday, Coach Elliott states that practice went well this week. “We have been really, really drilling these kids talking about the mindset aspect of the game…we’ve got to have consistent days of practices that are great. This week even though it’s a rivalry game and they love playing this game against Warren County…this week has been a great week of practice.” Coach agrees with WIZS’ George Hoyle that you have to practice like you’re going to play. No injuries have plagued the Vance County squad Elliott says, which is always a good thing.

Warren County, a member of the Tar-Roanoke Conference, is a 1A school and since Vance County Schools consolidated, the Vipers have beaten the Eagles every time they’ve played each other. Coach Elliott wants to make sure that his team doesn’t overlook their opponent this week. “That game (Vance County vs. Warren County) has came down to the last play of the game or even the last drive of the game every year…I want to put an emphasis on our mindset and that we don’t feed into the hype as much. We focus on what we’re doing and what we’ve got to do to get better for ourselves. Minimizing mistakes and everybody doing their job.”

Coach Elliott is excited to get the season started and said, “Come out and support the Vipers. After last year, everybody is excited to see how we respond and rebound off of that early playoff loss. We have a good returning class, a lot of returners back on both sides of the ball. Everybody is excited to watch us play football.”

Vance County travels to Warren County for Week 1 of the 2024 season Friday, August 23rd 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.

Click Play!