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There’s no secret what Morristown West football coach Alvin Sanders has his team working on this week in practice as they prepare for their region opener on Friday night at Tennessee High.

Taking on Elizabethton last Friday, the Trojans were hit with 17 penalties for 156 yards in a 20-7 loss. Those penalties ended offensive drives prematurely and kept defensive drives going, leading to two touchdowns for the Cyclones.

This week, West will be looking to clean things up in practice for what they know will be another tough matchup.

“I love the effort, they played extremely hard, but we didn’t play a great mental game,” Sanders said. “When you do stuff like that, it takes you out of scoring position and also keeps their drives alive. We gave up 14 points because of that. A great, hard lesson learned, but I’m sure our guys are going to respond in the right way and come out and it won’t happen again.”

While never wanting penalties of that magnitude to happen, Sanders said he’s glad last week was the week for it to happen. Now, he has plenty to show his players what they need to correct in order to be successful the rest of the season.

“It’s one of those things that we can say until we’re blue in the face, but our guys a lot of time believe it when they see it,” Sanders said. “It’s no longer a blind faith. When they get a chance to see it for themselves, it’s a great teaching lesson. Now as a ball team, every guy knows that we can be something special and we can’t do things to hurt ourselves. If we clean it up, we have a confident group of guys on knowing what they can do this season.”

On Friday, Morristown West will travel to a tough environment at The Stone Castle and will face a run-heavy Tennessee High team.

The Vikings enter the contest at 1-1, coming off a 48-25 win over Sullivan East. In that game, Tennessee High ran for 348 yards and five rushing touchdowns. Josh Bell had 110 yards and a touchdown on five carries, while Josh Green had 106 yards and a score.

“We have to tackle and get lined up,” Sanders said. “They (Tennessee High) know what they are good at and do it exceptionally well. They have a veteran quarterback too. He’s not making mistakes. When you have a running game like they have, it’s difficult.”

On the flip side, the Morristown West defense enters the contest having given up just 166 rushing yards on 54 carries.

“The biggest thing is that we need to keep pursuing the football,” Sanders said. “We have to have multiple guys at the football, and that has paid off for us so far. If we can limit people and make them one dimensional, it makes it easier for us to call things. We just need to keep pursuing the football.”

Defensively, Tennessee High struggled to stop the pass last week against Sullivan East as the Patriots threw for a whopping 533 yards.

For Sanders, he wants to remain balanced in his attack and keep the Vikings defense guessing.

“Our offensive staff is doing a great job right now of spreading the ball around,” Sanders said. “They’re getting all of our running backs and wide receivers equal touches. That keeps defenses off balance because they have to be concerned with all of these guys. If we just continue to develop and fix a few things, we’re going to be a hard offense to contain.”

Through the first two games of the season, Sanders has been encouraged about what he has seen from his team at times. For the Trojans, they just need to continue to improve on the mental side of things and fix the penalty aspect as they head into games where things start to get real.

“We have a team that is willing to lay it on the line,” Sanders said. “They’re continuing to gel together and put their trust in each other. We just need to continue to develop the mental side of the game. We can’t do little things to hurt ourselves. We have to go play the other team. We can’t play ourselves and the other team. If we continue to fix that, we’re going to be fine.”

Kickoff for Friday night is set for 7 p.m. at The Stone Castle. For both teams, it’s a chance to get off to a great start in region play and set the tone for the rest of the season.

“It’s very important,” Sanders said. “I remember talking to all the other coaches in the region in the summer, and all of us felt good about our team. All of us can be conference champs. It’s going to be all about who can get off to the right start, who can limit mistakes and go be successful. We don’t want to make this game bigger than it is but at the same time we know just how important it is.”