BROOKVILLE — Arcanum squared off in its second football scrimmage of the week Saturday morning.
The Division VI Trojans, who had faced Division VII New Bremen on Tuesday, took a step up in competition this time by matching up against Division V foe Brookville. The Blue Devils were a playoff participant during the 2015 season.
During the opening sessions of the scrimmage each offense was given 10 plays to see what it can do against the other’s defense. Arcanum Coach T J Powers wanted to see a more potent start from his team.
“We didn’t start … we didn’t come out at the opening whistle ready to go,” Powers said. “I felt like that’s been an Achilles’ heel of ours. We’ve been trying. We’ve been preaching and working about coming out of the gate strong. We’ve got to get that corrected.
“The big thing on both sides of the ball is that we’ve made a lot of metal errors. I counted 11 mental errors on the varsity offense alone, and we turned the ball over twice.”
When the scrimmage shifted to regular down and distance play, the Trojan offense seemed to come to life. Arcanum made a nice initial drive into Brookville territory only to be stopped by consecutive Blue Devil sacks.
The second Arcanum drive took the ball deep into the Blue Devils’ end, but the Trojans were stopped on a fourth-and-1 play.
“We preach no mental errors,” Powers said. “We’re going to have physical errors. We’ve got to take it to the next level and get rid of the mental mistakes. That’s why we practice and prepare for.”
The final Trojan series brought new life to the team when senior Brandon Kinney galloped for a 60-plus yard touchdown run to put Arcanum on the scoreboard.
“We’ll get better. We’ll keep improving … I was pleased with how we finished,” Coach Powers said.
Arcanum’s final preseason tune-up will be at 7 p.m. Friday at Milton-Union.
