#HSFT19 Stop #54 — Lafayette Commodores

OXFORD, Miss. (WCBI) — The more motivation the better. At least, that’s how the Lafayette Commodores are approaching the 2019 season..

After falling to West Point in the second round of the playoffs and finishing the 2018 season, 9-4, the Dores graduated 25 seniors leaving plenty of motivation on their plate.

While some might see it as an obstacle, head coach Michael Fair welcomes the challenge saying that the program he’s been building over the past few years makes the turnover easy to handle.

“We had a lot of good players behind those guys that were just waiting on opportunities and they’re about to get one Friday night,” Fair said. “So, I think our seniority relies on the offensive and defensive line but we also have Randy Anderson coming back who’s started for us the last two years at quarterback. So it’s always nice to have him back and I think we have enough pieces around to hopefully take the load off a little bit.”

One of the big pieces returning for Lafayette is going to be at the line. The Dores return all five offensive lineman from last year and 3 of 4 defensive lineman as well. That component, Fair says should be a major key in finding success.

“That experience is something you really can’t get anywhere else. They’ve been through some tough battles. We played West Point tight a couple of times last year and we felt we were knocking on the door. We’re playing such a tough district that we feel the line of scrimmage is so important,” Fair said.

That final game of the season against West Point has stuck with Lafayette through the off-season. The Dores fell short off a third round berth by just one T-D. Now, it drives the team to make necessary improvements.

“West Point put us out,” senior OL Levi Lott said. “So we just messed up on about two plays right there. This year we’ve really worked on executing them better. Just looking at the little things better. We’re going through each play more seriously. Just making sure we’re going in and making our right steps.

“Working on our tackling. Working on our gaps and all the other stuff, ” senior DL Tavion Prather said.

Lafayette will get another shot at West Point come mid-September but the Dores know to get there they first have to get past week one.

“We work our opponent each day. We want to beat our opponent each day. We don’t know what they’re doing so we just have to focus on ourselves. We have to win the day every day here at Lafayette,” Lott said.

“What do you do every day from that last game to this coming Friday night? That’s all that matters. We don’t talk about playoffs or championships or anything like that. We really just talk about today and are we taking advantage of every single day. I’ll be honest with you this team has done that as well as any team I’ve coached. We never talk about week two we always talk about week one. So we put a lot of importance on it. We hope were 1-0 and you can’t win them all if you don’t win the first one if I’ve heard that before,” Fair said.

Lafayette gets its season started on the road against Cleveland Central on August 23rd.