Holtville participated in the third annual Battle for the County 7-on-7 tournament, hosted by Wetumpka at the City of Wetumpka Sports Complex on Thursday night. Elmore County, Tallassee, Stanhope Elmore were the other three teams in attendance at the tournament.
Going in, coach Cory Lee knew that his team’s performance would be telling, indicating experience, poise and handling the adversity of a long night playing a lot of football. Given the size of Holtville’s team and their classification as a 5A team, many of the Bulldogs take repetitions on both sides of the ball.
The night had its ups and its downs, but the experience and knowledge gained was worthwhile for the Bulldogs.
“We were missing four of our defensive starters, and it showed,” Lee said. “I was kind of getting into them a little bit, about day one coverage, some things you would hope (they knew). That’s why we did it though, the experience they got, the reps they got, we made a bunch of mistakes. But there were some good things too.”
Holtville entered the bracket-play portion of the tournament as the 5th seed out of five teams. Their night ended prematurely, losing to Wetumpka in the first round of bracket play. Despite the early exit, the Bulldogs had plenty of moments where they shined against the other Elmore County teams.
Daishaun Zeigler had an especially good showing. Zeigler was at safety as well as running back for the entirety of the tournament, playing a majority — if not all — of the snaps for the Bulldogs.
“Zeigler is our bell cow in the backfield,” Lee said. “He had a really, really good day. He made tons of catches for us, a lot of plays, he scored a lot for us. It was good to see him really get involved.”
According to Lee, the event was an overall positive experience for the Bulldogs and a step in the right direction as they approach the beginning of official practice.
“I think the whole tournament is great, I think it’s great to get our county out,” said Lee. “It seemed like there were a lot of fans there to enjoy the end of our summer, it’s just a great overall event. We enjoy doing that every summer.”
