With a new coach on the sidelines, the Houston Nimitz football team was looking to take a few steps in the right direction. After a few years of being on the outside looking in, 2009 was the year for all of that to change.
The offense has a potent attack that involves guys like Josh Huff and Marion Grice. But the defense is headed up by safety Julius Wilkins. After dropping a few preseason games, the Cougars look to turn things around in District 19-5A play.
“We have no where to go but up. We started kind of slow and everybody thinks we are down except for us,” Wilkins said. “We are still a family and we are going to fight until the end.”
That fight must have started last Friday.
The Cougars showed some signs of forward progress after last week’s big win. In a situation that would even up the district win/loss column, Nimitz took down the district frontrunner Atascocita 20-17 last Friday.
Talk amongst coaches was trying to get all facets of the game together to pull out a win. From a team standpoint, the 5-foot-9, 170-pound Wilkins would like to see a little more teamwork, unity.
“If we want to win this district title, we must come together as a family. We have to trust each starter and each back up, on offense and defense and special teams, even the coaches,” Wilkins said. “It comes down to trust.”
Wilkins is a team leader in his own right, but his heart lies with the defense. Week in and week out, he wants to see improvement in the Cougar defense.
“This defense started off good, but we let our opponents get too many yards. People start to think, these guys give 1,600 yards on the year and good defenses don’t do that,” Wilkins said. “We have a lot of defensive speed. We are a hawk-eye defense and we get to the ball. We have to stay on top of this and keep being physical.”
With all that was said, the Nimitz defense seemed to be in rare form last Friday, giving up only 134 yards of offense to a solid Atascocita team. Maybe that was what Wilkins was hoping for out of the defense.
While he is busy knocking heads around in North Houston, Wilkins also seeks to land a role on a college roster.
Right now he said that Southland Conference schools Texas State and McNeese State are showing interest, as well as TCU.
“I could possibly have one college offer, but I plan to deal with that when the season is out,” Wilkins said. “My first role is to do what I need to do to help this team out.”