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Thad Wells and the Lakeway Christian Lions are looking inward this week as they prepare to travel to Volunteer.

Coming off a 35-0 loss to Knox Catholic in their first game at the Division II-AA level, Wells doesn’t see any reason to change anything scheme-wise.

“Catholic had a very good defensive line, which in high school football, if you have a very good front it makes it very hard to throw the ball. We just struggled to get in front of the sticks, we had a few drives being put together in the first half, but a couple holding penalties halted those drives,” Wells said. “Then there were a couple drives where we did make it down to the red zone, but we couldn’t get it in the end zone. It doesn’t really change how we think about things, I’m not thinking that this week we have to do anything different to sustain drives, as it is with a lot of high school games it comes down to matchups on the field, and they had some really good guys up front that made it tough to move the ball on them.”

Volunteer runs a varied spread offense. They have two-tight end sets, bunch sets, trips, doubles, you name it. On the offensive line, they utilize a lot of pulling guards and the like.

“We script everything they do, and we put it on cards just like everybody else, but honestly we’re going to focus on us more than them. I just finished the practice schedule for today, and most of it is just us vs. us, not really caring what the other team is doing a whole lot. They do lots of formations and different things, we do the same thing on offense,” Wells said. “We have plenty of schemes in our offense where we pull lineman as well, so that shouldn’t be a big deal. In football, if you can teach kids principles and rules, you should really be able to apply them to anything. Just because you watch something on film doesn’t mean that’s what you’re going to get on gameday.”

In terms of takeaways from last Friday’s game, Wells was just disappointed by his team’s effort.

“I would say the biggest thing for us is 100% effort from whistle-to-whistle. So you just have young guys or new guys or whatever that just don’t know how to push themselves 100% from whistle to whistle, that’s really what we’re looking at,” Wells said. “For people to unlock their potential, and really go as hard as they can for however many plays they can give each Friday night, and our focus has been more on finishing. And we know that the more you care for your teammate, the more likely you’re going to push through when things get tough. So our talk Monday was about love and serving others, and not making this a selfish endeavor.”

The Lions won’t be gameplanning for anyone in particular on the Falcons on either side of the ball. Again, the focus will be on themselves.

“We truly focus on ourselves a lot more than most people. Typically what I’ll do is I go to Hudl and whichever kid is getting the most views is the one getting the most eyeballs in recruiting and all of that stuff, so I know they’ve got a big tight end that’s got a lot of numbers,” Wells said. “Their Hudl is messed up though, and they’ve got some players from previous seasons on there so it got a little difficult, but I know they’ve got a big tight end, and honestly I didn’t go much further than that. We just watched film.”

This week, they’ll need to get Shajai Jackson going offensively. Last week, Jackson wasn’t able to break through the Fighting Irish defense. To find more success this week, they’ll need more production.

“Even last week, everything starts with him (Jackson) to a large degree on offense. We had trouble running the ball last week on offense, so he was at receiver the whole second half, and caught a lot of balls out there,” Wells said. “So he’s a very versatile kid that can do a lot of stuff, and he’s a smart kid that can remember a lot as well so we can do a lot of things with him. So he’s always going to be a focus. Jesse Stump, Jace Ballard, Caleb Davis, we’ve got a lot of weapons on offense, but Shajai is definitely important for us offensively.”

Looking ahead, Wells is confident about the rest of the schedule. Catholic provided a challenge in week one, but it sets them up well in preparation for further Division II-AA competition.

Kickoff is at Volunteer High School on Friday at 7:30 p.m., and if the Lions play hard all the way to the whistle, Wells likes their chances.

“We knew that last week was going to be a challenge, and that we’d have to play really good football and we didn’t. We didn’t run to the whistle all four quarters, and that’s the biggest thing that we were frustrated with and trying to get fixed this week,” Wells said. “We really like our schedule this season the rest of the way, we think we can be really competitive. I think Volunteer is a game that if we show up and play really hard we’ll be really competitive in it. We have turned inward so much this week, to look at ourselves after game one, that it wouldn’t really matter who we played next. If you don’t run hard whistle-to-whistle, it doesn’t matter who you play.”