[By Stephen Amason, Special to ETSN.fm]

Sulphur Springs football coach Greg Owens shared a quote from Washington State football coach Mike Leach over the phone on Tuesday: “It’s more about spreading it out to everybody, so they have to defend the field vertically, horizontally, you’re giving it to the running back. Everybody is getting the ball.”

The Wildcats of Sulphur Springs have done just that.

Senior quarterback D’Corian Young has accounted for 10 of the team’s 14 touchdowns, seven of which were passing touchdowns to four different receivers. Young has thrown to eight receivers for total of 41 completions.

“He’s done a nice job a distributing the ball and keeping us moving down the field,” Owens said. “He’s a talented young man and one of the keys to our success on offense.”

Running the ball is the key to the Wildcats’ success. They like to rotate three different running backs – Caden Davis, Colton Allen, and Di’Korian Sims. Davis has 39 carries for 242 yards, Allen has 38 carries for 169 yards, and Sims has 13 carries for 67 yards.

“When they come out onto the field, they are hungry for some yards,” Owens said. “They’re dual-threat guys, they come out of the backfield and catch the ball, too.”

Sulphur Springs is off to its best start since 2009. The Wildcats are 3-0 (2-0 in District 8-5A Division II).

“When you’re in a nine-team district you better win all you can when you can,” Owens said. “We just know it’s one game at a time, just try to keep winning, and we’re fortunate we’re 2-0.

“Everybody's getting touches with different receivers, you got running backs we’re throwing it to. I think it's making it hard on everybody, you gotta cover a bunch of different people.”

The Wildcats are coming off a bye week and are ready to get back onto the field.

“We made last week competitive on offense and defense going against each other, creating some game situations,” Owens said. “Our kids are hungry and they’re ready to go back to work this week.”

One special thing about this team is having 31 returning seniors.

“This is the first time I’ve ever had that, across the board too, offense and defense,” Owens said. “A lot of these young men are stepping up.”

Senior linebacker Daniel Moreno leads the team with 21 tackles. Just behind him are seniors Austin Dodd and DQ Pitts, who both have 16 tackles.

“Man I’m telling you, those guys are having great years and doing a good job,” Owens said.

This week Sulphur Springs goes on the road to Forney (1-4, 1-2).

“They’re a hard-nose football team, they’re gonna try to eat the clock up, they just like to get after it and give you some tough formations,” Owens said of this week’s opponent.

“They want to play a physical game and run downhill right at you. They have a nice accurate quarterback too that they run play-action off of to try to put you in a bind. We got our hands full with those guys but we got a good game plan so as long as we stay healthy and can get after it, we think we got a pretty good plan.”

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