RISON - After getting a late season open date last week, the Woodlawn Bears will return to action this Friday when they host the Marvell Mustangs for homecoming at the Carl Jones Sports Complex. The junior high teams play at 5 p.m. followed by the varsity teams at 7 p.m.Woodlawn and Marvell are on opposite ends of the football spectrum this year in terms of performance. The Bears are undefeated at 6-0 overall and 3-0 in South Conference play while the Mustangs are 0-5 overall and 0-4 in league action. This will be final game of the season for Marvell after falling at Dermott last Friday night, 48-18.Even without playing last week, the Bears made some progress towards a possible conference championship when the Strong Bulldogs knocked off Brinkley, 14-6, to hand the Tigers their first league loss. Woodlawn now leads the conference standings at 3-0 followed by Strong (41) and Brinkley (3-1).The Tigers and Bears are scheduled to play in the regular season finale on Nov. 7 at Woodlawn. Despite its loss to Strong, Brinkley can still throw the conference title into a three-way tie by knocking off Woodlawn in that final game.Bears Coach Doug Means said that fact is not lost on the team as they prepared for Marvell this week. "We talked a lot about going undefeated and things like that," he said. "But we also talked about just taking it one game at a time." As the season has progressed, Means has sprinkled in a few new plays along the way. He said a lot of that is something they have been practicing all year long but fans may not have seen it yet. "There are several things we haven't run in games just yet because we have been waiting for conference," he said. "There are still a few little wrinkles we really haven't shown or shown very little of." Despite their record, Means said the Mustangs still have the personnel to give the Bears some fits. "They've got the things that kind of hurt us - speed," he said.Marvell Coach Terrell Hammonds...
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