With an opening week victory under their belts, the Escambia Academy Cougars will travel to Grove Hill to take on the Clarke Prep Gators on the gridiron Friday night.

The Cougars (1-0, 0-0) open up region play with their game against the Gators, who they defeated in a 30-24 shootout on Oct. 9 last season.

Cougars head coach Heath Gibson said the focus of practice this week is ball control due to the five lost fumbles the Cougars suffered against the Sparta Warriors last Friday.

“This week in practice, we are working on a lot of ball handling drills,” Gibson said. “We had five turnovers the other night against Sparta, so we have issues that need to be fixed. Other than that, we will look at how we can utilize our speed to win the ballgame.”

Another problem the Cougars faced in their season opener was the performance of their offensive line. Gibson said that he thinks some changes in practice last week affected how his blockers handled their assignments.

“We are going to work on finishing everything we do this week,” Gibson said. “We went to quick whistles in practice last week, which I think hurt us, but this week we are going to slow those whistles down, and work on finishing our blocks.”

The Cougars and Gators kick off Friday at 7 p.m. in Grove Hill.

For more on this story, see Wednesday’s edition of The Atmore Advance.