Scrimmages over, Wildcats eye Halls
With its final scrimmage in the rearview mirror, the Oak Ridge High School football team has turned its attention to the season opener against Knoxville Halls.
The Wildcats, who won their first nine games in 2025 on their way to a 9-2 finish, will head to North Knox County to take on the Red Devils, who reached the Class 5A state semifinals last season.
“We don’t have a jamboree (this week), and we don’t have another scrimmage,” Oak Ridge Coach Derek Rang said. “So we’ll spend this week getting ready for Halls.
“We have two scrimmages, and we have a catalog of material that we can use to correct from and prepare, and we’re going to spend the week preparing for Halls and working on us.”
In their final scrimmage of the preseason, the Wildcats played Cookeville on Friday night in Middle Tennessee, and Rang was pleased with his squad’s effort.
“We’ve had two scrimmages,” Rang said. “And they’ve been against two different teams. We played Fulton (on July 31), and they have some speed.
“Then, we played Cookeville, and they’re strong on the offensive line and in the defensive box.”
The scrimmage between the Wildcats and Cavaliers featured a unique format, with both teams playing five series using down-and-distance situations. The junior varsity and freshman teams then got their opportunities to close out the night.
“It was kind of a unique format, but it was a positive format for us,” Rang said. “We had five series with down and distance, and then we had a period where the JV team was on one half of the field and the freshmen were on the other side.
“We started a little slow, but we scored on our third series when Brody Sparks threw a touchdown pass to Malik Howard,” he said. “Defensively, Jeremiah Stevens, our edge player and outside linebacker, played really well.”
