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BY NIC MILLER
STAR STAFF
nic.miller@elizabethton.com

After an impressive offensive showing by the Cloudland Highlanders last Friday against the Happy Valley Warriors, one in which the team from Roan Mountain scored more than 50 points for the third time this season, the ‘Landers are back in action on the road this weekend.

Cloudland will make the trip to Mountain City to take on a familiar foe in the form of the Johnson County Longhorns this Friday.

However, Highlanders head coach Zac Benfield first spoke about last week’s performance against the Warriors Monday, saying, “Last Friday, I thought that our run blocking was excellent and our defense played exceptional, especially in terms of stopping their run game. On the other hand, we need to improve on causing penalties, as we had a total of seven penalties for 70 yards.”

As previously mentioned, the Landers put up 50 or more points for the third time on Friday, a fact that Benfield spoke on saying, “Our offense has done very well in spurts, but there have also been spurts where the offense has not done so well. What we are working towards is being an offense that works well consistently.”

Looking forward to this week’s contest against the Longhorns, Benfield explained the game plan, saying, “Johnson County is a very athletic team and they have one heck of a quarterback. We are gonna have to be able to guard the perimeter and our defensive backs are going to have to play very well to stop that air attack.

“We are also gonna have to make tackles in space because of that, and we will have to win those one on one battles. If we can get that done, I think we will be okay.”

This Cloudland football team is performing very well in this fall campaign, off to their best record at this point in the year since 2018. Benfield spoke about how special this team and their performance this season has been.

“We have a slew of dedicated men on our side, and they have been working their butts off since all the way back to last offseason. It’s great to see these guys working so hard for something they are passionate about, and not only because they have to but because they want to put in the work.”

The Highlanders will get a chance to showcase their hard work once again this Friday night against the Johnson County Longhorns at Johnson County High School in Mountain City at 7:30 pm.