Whitehouse gets late touchdown, outscores Lindale in scrimmage

Published 9:11 am Friday, August 18, 2023

WHITEHOUSE — Whitehouse and Lindale had their final tune-up before the 2023 regular season when they met in a scrimmage on Thursday night at Wildcat Stadium.

Whitehouse’s first scrimmage was against Paris on the road before coming home to face a Smith County foe.

“There were good things, and there were bad things,” Whitehouse head football coach Kyle Westerberg said. “We had a lot of fixable mistakes for a final tune-up to get ready for next week. The biggest thing is coming out of this deal healthy.”

Lindale hosted Sulphur Springs in its first scrimmage before Thursday’s meeting with Whitehouse.

“I thought we played pretty well,” Lindale head football coach Chris Cochran said. “I liked the way we responded in that second quarter. It was kind of back and forth and back and forth and then the defense got a couple of stops right there. That was a good thing because we couldn’t stop them in the first quarter. Offensively, I felt like we played really fast and did a lot of good stuff. But as you know, in a scrimmage, there’s some bright spots and then there’s stuff you’ve got to do a better job with. The beauty of it, it’s on film, and we’re going to teach off of it next week.”

The two teams played two regular 12-minute quarters, had a 10-minute halftime and then played two 10-minute quarters with a running clock. Whitehouse scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to outscore Lindale 35-28 in the scrimmage.

Lindale marched down on its opening drive of the night and scored on a 13-yard pass from Clint Thurman to Wyatt Parker to take a 7-0 lead. The Wildcats answered with a 10-yard touchdown run with 3:31 on the clock to tie the score at 7-7.

After Whitehouse’s defense got a stop, the Wildcats again got on the board as a 9-yard completion from Josh Green to Braylen Jackson on fourth down set up a 1-yard touchdown run by sophomore Tyler Lacombe to put the Wildcats ahead 14-7 early in the second quarter.

The Eagles answered with a 74-yard touchdown run by Parker.

Whitehouse put starting running back Iven Lacy in on the next drive — his only action of the night. On the first play, he had a 37-yard carry, and he finished the drive with a 3-yard touchdown run.

“We know what he can do,” Westerberg said. “We kind of had him on a pitch count. We just wanted to get him a couple of reps and know that him, Josh and the guys up front are going to be carrying the load next week until we can get some things ironed out.”

Lindale tied the score back at 21 with a 10-yard touchdown run. The Eagles added another touchdown run with 5:37 left in the second quarter to take a 28-21 lead at halftime.

The Eagles had three rushing touchdowns on the night.

“We did run the ball well,” Cochran said. “That was the big question from a lot of people. We’ve got to replace four O-linemen, and how are we going to do that? For two weeks in a row, our O-line has handled it. And these guys were bringing a little bit more, and I felt like they protected the quarterback well, and we ran the football well. When you can run the football, it gives you a chance, so we felt good about it.”

Neither team scored in the third quarter, but the Lindale defense did get an interception.

A 27-yard touchdown pass by Jacob Carey tied the score at 28 on the first play of the fourth quarter.

Za’majeigh Mosley scored on a 7-yard run with 1:20 left in the scrimmage to put Whitehouse ahead 35-28.

Both coaches said they liked what they saw in the passing game from their team.

“I thought the receivers stepped up tonight and made a few plays,” Westerberg said. “They’re growing. It’s a young group where we’ve got to grow a little bit, and I think that group made some plays tonight.”

“We wanted to throw and catch better, and we did that,” Cochran said. “We wanted to tackle better, and I don’t know that we tackled better. We were playing hard. I think we played faster tonight. We didn’t necessarily finish the play. The good thing is we can get it coached, we can get it taught. The key is if they can run fast and they can fly around to the ball, we can get the tackling stuff coached up.”

Whitehouse will open the season Thursday at North Forney. Lindale will host Kaufman in the season opener on Friday.