Laughlin Times: Local

LAUGHLIN - The LHS football team got a pre-season look at two of this season's foes - Henderson International and Diamond Ranch - during the fourth annual Laughlin Jamboree scrimmages Saturday night in Cougar Stadium.

Coach Jason Leonard will enter his fourth season as the lead mentor of the Silver and Blue when LHS defends the Ray DePalma Memorial Shoe Trophy at 7 p.m. Friday on its home turf against the Indian Springs High School Thunderbirds.

Assisting him this season will be T.J. Steckelburg and Tom Stattler, taking over from Jim Estes.

On offense, Leonard moved Corey Cook from quarterback to be the main running back, with Christian Kruse in front of him and Andre Prosise taking the snaps from Michael Johnson. All three backs have played quarterback for the Cougars at one time or another.

After the Jamboree, Leonard commented, “We won't be the biggest. We won't be the fastest. But if we'll be the smartest, it will solve a lot of our problems.”

That was evident by the number of touchdowns scored and given up.

Laughlin downed the Kingman Academy of Learning Tigers, 3-0; got blanked by the pumped up Hurricane, Utah, Diamond Ranch Diamondbacks, 4-0; handled the Henderson International Wolverines, 2-0; then lost to cross-river rival Mohave Accelerated Learning Center's Patriots, 2-0.

Of the Wolverines, Leonard said, “They are fundamentally a sound team. But they, too, are young and so will improve as the season goes on.”

The private school in Nevada's second-largest city is in its third year on the gridiron.

Screen passes seemed to give the Cougar defense problems, especially against Diamond Ranch.

Of the Diamondbacks, Leonard said, “They did a very good job. They are fast and execute very well. You could tell they have been practicing.”

He said he will carry 12 or 13 of his 27 players on the varsity, including two freshmen.

Most of the rest are freshmen who have either never played or it has been a long time since their Pop Warner days.

Thus Leonard said he thought they did well in their first contest, a 20-play scrimmage, in a previously unannounced JV game with Diamond Ranch.

The Diamondbacks won easily, but Leonard still maintained, “Our boys did a very good job for not having played together before.”

While MALC was on last year's LHS schedule, the two schools were not able to line up a Border Bowl game for this season.