Manatee Hurricanes' Season Kickoff is Hardly Ideal

The ominous skies surrounding Joe Kinnan Field at Hawkins Stadium on Wednesday night and a losing half-time score threatened to put an immediate damper on Manatee High’s football season.

Ultimately, the Hurricanes used a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns to rally for a victory over a visiting American Heritage squad from Delray Beach, a team with three Class 1A state championship game appearances in the last four seasons.

The 20-14 triumph in the 2011 Kickoff Classic, an unofficial game played two days early because of the threat of Hurricane Irene, made it easy for supporters to overlook that Manatee may be vulnerable this year.

Four first-half sacks, the third quarter 84-yard touchdown pass from the Stallions’ Marcus Davis to Edwin Thomas and the Hurricanes’ inability to contain on American Heritage running backs left Kinnan and his staff concerned and frustrated. Whether the Hurricanes can learn from the miscues will be the gauge for the rest of the season.

“The numbers were not in our advantage,” Kinnan said. “When you’re down 7-6, that’s a big difference than being tied at seven. We didn’t have some kids play up to their ability. We’ll look at the film and see what we have to do, try to correct the mistakes and be better. I think a lot of progress is made from week one to week two.”

Manatee, which has won four region championships since the start of the 2005 season, has a different barometer for improvement than most teams heading into a season opener. After playing visiting Tampa Plant in a Kickoff Classic televised by ESPN and traveling to the Pittsburgh, Pa.-area for a game last season, the Hurricanes will start the 2011 campaign on Sept. 2 against host Our Lady of Good Counsel in Olney, Md.

The game against Our Lady of Good Counsel will be the first of two Manatee games to have a bearing on mythical national championship chases promoted by various publications and websites. The Hurricanes will play host to a Don Bosco Prep squad from Ramsey, N.J., which enters the season ranked first nationally by ESPN on Sept. 16.

Manatee was ranked sixth nationally by ESPN before Wednesday night’s win over the Stallions. Lofty status for a team that has only one returning starter on the defensive line in Marquis Dawsey and used eight new starters on offense against American Heritage.

“You take (wins) whether they’re pretty or ugly,” Kinnan said. “I had rather have an ugly win than a pretty loss. (American Heritage) probably ran twice as many plays as we did. When we needed to get them off the field, they gashed us on a couple of third-down conversions. We just have to get better.”