Jamborees next for Vermilion Parish football teams

Football teams around Vermilion Parish will be participating in jamborees this week in their final preparations for the regular season, which begins next week.
The Abbeville Wildcats will host the Crowley Gents on Friday in Wildcat Stadium at 8 p.m.  Following their scrimmage last Friday against Patterson, head coach Johnathan Zenon said the Wildcats have a lot to fix.
“We’re not where we need to be right now,” Zenon said.  “We have a lot of work to do.  We played a lot of younger guys.  It was slow at first, but we finally found a rhythm.  I liked everything we did in the live period.”
“We’re going to exchange film with Crowley.  Once we break it down, we’ll develop a more specific game plan.  Then we can start preparing for Friday.”
In the scrimmage, the Wildcats struggled to sustain drives due to penalties and turnovers, but they did move the ball when they abandoned the scrimmage format and went to live action.
Justin Montgomery led the Wildcats’ rushing attack with 28 yards on seven carries.  Quarterback Da’Zavien Maze went 7-16 for 76 yards while Edmar Simon III intercepted a pass in the endzone to thwart a Lumberjacks’ scoring threat.
The Kaplan Pirates also play Friday at Wildcat Stadium.  They play the Church Point Bears with kickoff scheduled for 6 p.m.  Kaplan scrimmaged Eunice last week.  Head coach Stephen Lotief believes his team will be fine if they can stop shooting themselves in the foot.
 “We did good, but we must get better,” Lotief said.  “We just have to quit putting the ball on the ground and giving up the big plays.  We played hard, but we stopped ourselves.”
North Vermilion and Erath will travel to Rayne on Thursday for their jamboree games.  The Patriots will challenge the Eunice Bobcats at 6 p.m.  Erath will take on the Rayne Wolves starting at 7:30 p.m.
VC will be in Opelousas at Westminster High to battle Hamilton Christian at 7 p.m. Tickets are being sold at VC or at the gate for $10.