The Maclay Middle School football team has made a dramatic turnaround this season, going from a 0\u20136 record a year ago to 4\u20131 through its first five games this fall.<\/p>\n
The Marauders have put together four wins, including three shutouts and double-digit victories, while building a team culture that coaches say has been a major factor in the turnaround.<\/p>\n
Maclay opened the season with an 18\u201312 win over Aucilla Christian before traveling to North Florida Christian and earning a 32\u20130 shutout. The Marauders followed that performance with another win over NFC, this time 32\u201312 at home.<\/p>\n
Maclay then traveled to face FAMU DRS and continued its strong start with a 38\u20138 victory.<\/p>\n
The team suffered its first loss of the season in its most recent game, falling 38\u20130 to Franklin County. Despite the loss, Maclay\u2019s improvement from last season remains significant.<\/p>\n
Coach Jarod Bates, the only returning coach from last year\u2019s staff, has coached the offensive and defensive lines and has had a front-row view of the team\u2019s transformation.<\/p>\n
Bates said the biggest difference between this year\u2019s team and last year\u2019s group has been the attitude and culture surrounding the program.<\/p>\n
The additions of Head Coach Jim McNeill and Offensive Coordinator Mike Rodrique have helped establish what Bates described as a positive and upbeat atmosphere, while also raising expectations for the players.<\/p>\n
The Marauders have continued to work and improve throughout the season, with Bates pointing to the team\u2019s effort and willingness to embrace the coaching staff\u2019s expectations as key reasons for the turnaround.<\/p>\n
Maclay has two regular-season games remaining, both against Holy Comforter. The first will be played at home on October 8, followed by an away game on October 13.<\/p>\n
With two games still remaining, Maclay has already accomplished something the program could not do at all last season: put together a winning record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Maclay Middle School football team has made a dramatic turnaround this season, going from a 0\u20136 record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-417737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}