Cougars grapple with rash of injuries

The Covenant Christian football team pulled its season record even on Friday night with a victory over Muenster Sacred Heart, but the Cougars are facing more and more injuries each week, and coach Rick Jackson said his biggest concern at this point is depth.

Covenant will take on Kennedale Fellowship at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 2 at Fort Worth Southwest Christian, and Jackson said he believes his team will have its hands full.

“They’re new to 11-man,” Jackson said. “This is their third or fourth year in 11-man football, and in TAPPS, you just don’t know. With a private school, you could have a couple of move-ins that make them formidable, and from what I have seen of them on tape, they are going to be a good team. We’re going to have our hands full, especially with the injuries we have.”

Covenant defeated Sacred Heart in overtime by a score of 32-26 and Jackson said that he was proud of the overall effort it took from his team to win the game.

“We had a couple of guys that got injured, so we had some younger guys that had to step in and fill those holes,” Jackson said. “They really rose to the occasion and did what we asked them to do, which was win in the fourth quarter, but they did it in overtime.”

Jackson said injuries are the overriding issue affecting his team at the moment.

“My main concern is injuries,” Jackson said. “We’ve got two or three players who have been injured. We have one player who is having surgery soon, and we’ll know at that point if he we will be back in two to three weeks or [if he’s] out for the season.

“Then we get another player back who broke his collar bone in a scrimmage, who is a key player. We get him back this week, but then we lost our starting quarterback for two to three weeks.”

Jackson said he does have a couple of players performing at a high level at the moment.

“Josh Stith is the guy who came in at QB against Sacred Heart,” Jackson said. “We basically won the game because of him. Joseph Goff had a big game at receiver and Niven Raj was also very important in helping us win in that game.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Cougars grapple with rash of injuries."