Warner Robins football overcomes short week to dominate Wayne County

WARNER ROBINS — Although the Demons were short two days rest, they came out and took care of business against Wayne County on Wednesday in a 36-3 final.

With Hurricane Helene looming Warner Robins (5-1, 1-0 Region 1-4A) and Wayne County (0-6, 0-1 Region) moved their game up two days.

Here are three observations:

PHOTOS: See more photos from Wednesday’s action.

1. Demons overcome mental errors

There’s no question that with weekly sports like football, routine is important.

You hear about professional athletes’ routines on game day and throughout the week, and Warner Robins football coach Shane Sams’s kids are no different:

“These high school kids are very routinist. We do a lot of psychology study and stuff like that, and we threw the whole routine off not by one day, but we threw it off by two days and practice, and then you jump the time up, so everything’s different,” Same said. “The atmosphere is different, you don’t have as big of a crowd. So it’s going to play a role in [the mental errors]…it’s not an excuse. We got to keep grinding.”

In the second quarter Rasean Dinkins did not call a fair catch on a punt, and three Yellow Jacket defenders came in and forced a fumble. Wayne County appeared to have recovered it, but they ruled a Warner Robins player down on a previous recovery attempt.

This continues the theme of hit-or-miss special teams for the Demons, something that won’t go unpunished next week against Benedictine.

2. Wayne County scored first points since Aug. 23

In their previous three games the Yellow Jackets were outscored 111-0, and had only scored 17 points all season.

Senior kicker Christian Sellers scored Wayne County’s first points since Aug. 23 against Brunswick on a 40-yard field goal to open the second quarter.

That was the only offense they mustered, however, as they fell into a 20-3 hole at halftime and were outscored 16-0 in the second half.

In a week full of distractions with weather and routine, Sams liked the way his Demons came out and played.

“There’s a lot of distractions with [is] school cancelled, not cancelled, storms, so I like that they came in, they grinned, they came together and played well. That’s what I like seeing. Again, was it perfect? No, a lot of things to fix, but they mentally dominated the game, and anytime you can dominate opponents is huge,” Sams said.

3. Extra rest

The positive spin on moving the game up two days is the fact that now, with potentially their biggest region game up next week against Benedictine, they have two extra days to prepare.

That extra time was a factor as Warner Robins considered the possibilities, according to Sams:

“When we talked about this game is possibly gonna move, we met as a staff and we knew that two extra days could be beneficial for us, so let’s take advantage of it. That’s what we did. We got the win and we took advantage of it, so now we just gotta move forward,” Sams said.

UP NEXT

The Demons will prepare for their biggest game yet as they get set to host Benedictine on Friday, Oct. 4 at 7:30 p.m. This is the final home game before a two-game region road trip.