 After ending the season with the win against non-central last year, the East Ridge Warriors are looking to keep the momentum rolling even through a pandemic. Our biggest goal is to compete, you know, because in the previous years we haven't really competed to our fullest potential. So we really want to come out this year and prove that we can compete and play against some of these tougher teams that we play on the schedule this year. We've got a lot of returning kids coming back, we've got our system pretty well put in and the kids seem to be responding to that, they seem to have a little bit deeper knowledge of what we want to do and we've been able to tell, especially with this compressed schedule, trying to prepare in just a couple weeks to get ready to play football, but the kids know in the system it's helped us and I feel like we are making pretty good preparations for September 11th. The Warriors have had to make some changes to the 2020 pre-season due to COVID-19, but the Warriors are happy to make the changes if it means playing the game they love. If we're not running or doing an active drill, everybody six feet apart, you know, and I mean, it isn't that bad. The worst part about it all would probably be the time restrictions that we don't get to get as much time out here as we want to get. Kids are resilient and they've come out and, you know, whatever they've allowed us to do, our kids have come out with good attitudes and they've worked hard in every way that we've asked them to do. You know, some of this stuff has been inconvenience on us and inconvenience on them, inconvenience on the coaches and administration of the school, but at the same time that inconvenience does not outweigh the advantages that these kids actually get to come out and play. Eastridge opens the season against Pineville at home on September 11th. For more on this and other stories, be sure to visit mountain-topsports.com or check us out on Facebook and Twitter. With Mountain Top Sports, I'm Cody Davis.