Unbeaten Diboll Ready For Unfamiliar Road Through New 3A District

[By Stephen Amason, Special to ETSN.fm]

The Diboll Lumberjacks may be in a different classification this year, but the ‘Jacks have managed to chop down every opponent that's come their way so far in 2018.

Diboll (5-0, 1-0 in District 11 3A Division I) has made a move from 4A football to 3A. Last Friday the ‘Jacks picked up their first district win last Friday over Crockett, 39-28.

The win was a nice way to get district games rolling for the ‘Jacks, but Crockett was a regular on their previous seasons’ schedules, and Diboll is still feeling like the new kid on the block in the district.

“We played Crockett, but that didn’t even feel like a district game because we played them every year,” said Diboll head coach Blake Morrison on Tuesday. “We got Coldspring coming up, and it’s starting feel like district now when we play people like Westwood, Elkhart, Frankston and Trinity. We were familiar with Jasper, Rusk, Center, Gilmer, now we’re in unfamiliar territory.”

The ‘Jacks have a great running attack led by junior running back D’Arias McMillan.

“He’s a big kid, probably around 230-pound back,” Morrison said. “He played last year in and out. In our playoff game against Gilmer last year, he ran for 180 yards. We knew he was a pretty good runner so we changed our offensive style to how he fits and what kinda runner he is.  He likes to see how many yards he can get after contact, that’s one of his big deals.”

Morrison said he creduts a lot of the success on offense this year to the offensive line. The line consists of a group of seniors with miles of experience between them.

“Our center Andrew Richards and tackle Cameron Cheshire have both been playing since they were sophomores.” he said. “I got two more seniors on that group, Adrian Martinez and Jose Acevedo, who are guys going into it we thought we could use, and we found our last one Ricardo Harrison, and those guys up front have been doing a great job.”

The defense has come to life for the ‘Jacks, too.

“Each year we’ve gotten better on defense,” Morrison said. “When I got here to Diboll, they didn’t even understand what defense was. Now, the mentality is there and understanding the schemes.”

This Friday night Diboll takes on Coldspring-Oakhurst (1-5, 1-1).

Morrison was the defensive coordinator at Coldspring-Oakhurst before he was the head coach at Diboll.

“We had some good teams and the senior team that's at Coldspring right now were seventh-graders when I left,” he said. “It won’t be unfamiliar to me but to our kids, yes it’s something new that they haven’t seen. We just gotta go play our type of football and hopefully come out on top.”