Dawson Street Christian School head coach Tory McCray loved the effort his players gave in last week’s game against Flint River.

He had one complaint, though, and that concerned his team’s inability to hang onto the ball.

The Wildcats had a slew of turnovers, and they were unable to overcome them in a 47-12 loss to Flint.

“We put the ball on the ground five times in the first half,” McCray said. “So we went back to fundamentals Monday working on the quarterback exchange, the quarterback running-back exchange, tucking the ball away, just getting back to the fundamentals of holding onto the football.”

McCray is hopeful the Wildcats will be able to avoid those mistakes on Friday when they host Heritage in their final non-region game of the regular season.

Next week, Dawson Street begins its GISA Region 1-A schedule on the road against Thomas Jefferson Academy.

“We’ll try to get some things going with the run game, and try to stop their run game,” McCray said. “We hope that we can hang with these guys.”

The Wildcats won their season opener against Arlington, but they’ve dropped consecutive games to Crown Academy, Westwood School and Flint River.

The Wildcats aren’t a deep team, and McCray said they’re trying to compensate for that.

“When you’re 16 (players) deep, it gets hard,” McCray said. “They’re playing both ways for the whole game.”

McCray said the players who are in the game for nearly every snap are giving it their all.

“We’re playing hard,” McCray said. “That’s one thing I can say is we’re definitely playing hard. We run out of gas sometimes, but we’re playing hard.”