Hawks look to put fundamentals together for improvement

The South Side Hawks football team showed flashes of brilliance last year.

They almost disrupted the Region 6-4A standings last year when they outplayed cross-town rival North Side in the first half last year before the Indians came back to win.

They had chances to knock other teams out of playoff contention in the second half of the season too but had a hard time stringing together positive plays on both sides of the ball consistently to get those wins.

But Lester Narcisse, the head coach for the Hawks going into his second year leading the program, has seen signs of growth from the team this year.

Hopefully that growth will be the rock-solid foundation for the Hawks to take their next steps as a program.

“If you want to talk about results in taking the next step, then the easy one there is making the playoffs,” Narcisse said. “But we’ve got to be more competitive in our region games to do that, and that takes our most fundamental goals.”

Those fundamental goals are simple, but they’re not easy.

“We’ve got to be more consistent in all three phases of the game and play four quarters every game,” Narcisse said. “That was a big problem for us last year.

“We might play somebody great for three quarters, but that other quarter – whenever it came because it could’ve been first or second or third – always got us when we had trouble keeping focus and doing what we’d set out to do each game.”

Narcisse said the North Side game is a perfect example because the Hawks played three of their best quarters of 2023 against the Indians, but it was that fourth quarter that got them and allowed North Side to come away with the win.

The Hawks lost their two best ball-carriers from last year’s team to graduation.

Chris Newbo is expected to get a lot of carries at fullback, and there are a couple of good slot receivers in Jabarion Burns and Brayden Welbon.

“I want us to have a balanced offensive attack too,” Narcisse said. “I mean if we do have a dominant run game or a pass game that’s hard to stop, that’s obviously OK, but balance is the best plan before the season.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news