The turnaround of the Lake Forest High School football season continued this past weekend as the team won yet again to keep its playoff hopes alive.

By beating Woodbridge High School (3-5, 0-4), 33-0, Oct. 30, the Spartans won for the third time in four games, and was able to secure a victory in yet another must-win situation.

For Lake to make the playoffs, it essentially needed to win its final four games, and through the first two of those Head Coach Freddy Johnson’s team seems to be on the right track.

The key to keeping the tournament hopes alive, Johnson said, is actually to forget about the tournament altogether.

“We’re focusing on a week-to-week situation right now,” he said. “It would be nice to get into the postseason, but right now we’re going to focus on Moyer Academy and then Milford High, and we’ll let the points fall where they do.”

For the past two weeks, starting with an Oct. 23 win over Indian River, 33-28, Johnson said the team has started to play with a lot of confidence and at the same time started to believe it could win games.

The coach said beating Indian River, a team that has had a strong program for a few years now, allowed the Spartans to realize they were just as good as any team.

On top of that, Johnson said his squad has corrected a problem that plagued it early in the season.

“We didn’t have turnovers this past week, and when our team protects the ball, we do pretty well,” he said. “Against Mount Pleasant we had five turnovers, against Delmar we turned the ball over four times and against Laurel we had four turnovers. Against good teams you can’t turn the ball over.

“One of the things we started doing in practice is spending more time on ball protection,” Johnson added. “It’s made them more conscientious of protecting the football recently.”

The Spartans will run into another must-win scenario this weekend whey they play host to Moyer Academy (2-4) at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, at James H. Blades Stadium.

Johnson said as he is unfamiliar with Moyer’s football program, he’s not so sure what to expect come Friday.

However, he added that it’s not so important to game plan for Moyer, just so long as his players execute the Lake game plan properly. That, Johnson said, should push the team toward success.

“We have to get better at what we do,” he said. “We need to go over our keys on defense, and if we’re going over our keys and reads right, we’ll be successful.”

Email Brian Citino at brian.citino@doverpost.com

UP NEXT
WHO Lake Forest High School (5-3, 4-2) vs. Moyer Academy (2-4)

WHEN 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6

WHERE James H. Blades Stadium, 5407 Killens Pond Road, Felton