The Charles Henderson Trojans football team continued its fall camp Friday night with an inter-squad scrimmage on the field at Charles Henderson Middle School.

Just one week after the start of the camp the Trojans, under head coach Brad McCoy, are gearing up for what they hope is a successful 2015 campaign.

The scrimmage’s format pitted an offensive team against a defensive team Friday night.

The team enthusiasm Friday evening rivaled what fans may experience in two weeks when the Trojans host Pike County.

“The enthusiasm and competition is exactly what I was hoping for,” McCoy said. “It doesn’t take much to get this group up. These guys love to play football, but they also hate not getting it done.”

The defense won the evening Friday night, a common occurrence in early season scrimmages that often sees the defense way ahead of the offense.

“I think tonight, as always the first scrimmage usually shows that the defense is way ahead of the offense,” McCoy said. “We talked after about our execution, the snaps, the ball security. I think when we go back and watch the film, going into Monday we will be able to make a lot of corrections, and we will make strides for next weeks scrimmage.”

Heading into the fall camp, the Trojans have had a battle at quarterback to determine who will start in two weeks against the Bulldogs. Both Bryson Gandy and Alex Bland took important snaps Friday night.

Bland got the majority of the reps, but both quarterbacks struggled to get anything going against a stingy defense.

“He (Bland) has the leadership and knows that, but he also understands he has to make plays,” McCoy said. “He puts a lot of pressure on himself to put the ball in the right spots and throwing the ball in a way we can catch the football. If I know Alex Bland he is going to come back in and watch his film, and he will make those corrections.”

The defense stole the show on Friday night and consistently flew to the ball and made the plays they had to make.

“I know coach Dunn is pleased. The defense played with a lot of passion tonight,” McCoy said. “We are going to really look at personal and we have to get guys in the right spots.”

The defense turned the ball over a handful of times and newly hired Defensive Coordinator Chuck Dunn credits his defense’s aggressiveness.

“In this first scrimmage like this, if you can take pride in how we run to the football, and I think we did that pretty well, your going to be fine,” Dunn said. “We talked about getting lined up correctly, and I think we did that for the most part. We also talked about creating turnovers, and we did that as well. One thing that I think we will correct Monday is missed tackles. We had a few missed tackles late, regardless if they were late or not, that can’t happen.”

Both McCoy and Dunn were impressed Friday night with the energy that Trojans brought with them to the field.

“We have been harping on the energy level the last few days. It doesn’t matter what level your at your energy level on defense has to be at the highest every time,” Dunn said “I thought we were focused, and that was something else we harped on this week.”

The Trojans will have one more week of fall practice that culminates Friday night with their second scrimmage of the camp. McCoy hopes for the team to continue to get better.

“We need to heal up. I don’t know if we have any guys that are banged up, but we need to be healthy,” McCoy said. “We need to fix the mistakes that we made tonight. The execution on offense has to get better. We need to have fewer snaps hit the ground and eliminated the fumbles and interceptions.”

Charles Henderson’s second game will be on Aug. 7 at 7 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Stadium.