COLUMBIA - What Jefferson City football coach Terry Walker was watching for the most during Friday night's Jamboree at Hickman was physicality.
"I just wanted to see the kids play as hard as they possibly could for as long as we possibly could," Walker said, "and I don't know that I can say that they did that."
It took just three plays for the Battle Spartans to reach the end zone against the Jays.
Jaren Lewis completed a 21-yard pass and ran it in from 16 yards out for the score.
But the Jays' defense stiffened up, recovering a fumble and not allowing the Spartans to score again before reaching the 12-play limit.
"There are individual positives," Walker said. "On each play there were guys that were doing good things, but collectively we need to learn it takes 11 guys on offense to have a positive play and it takes 11 guys on defense to have a positive play. You can't do it with two or three guys."
In their first action on offense, the Jays went four-and-out before using seven plays to score. Maleek Jackson had 11 yards on three carries, including a two-yard TD, during that possession.
Jackson also broke free for a 31-yard score against Battle and crossed the goal line for a 23-yard score against the Rock Bridge Bruins.
"I thought there were times where he made some nice cuts, but at the point of contact all of our players need to be more physical," Walker said. "You never want to see the pile go backwards and we saw the pile go backwards too many times tonight."
Receiver Devin White showed what he can do on both sides of the ball. Against the Bruins, he caught a quick pass from Devin Roberson and broke tackles along the sideline for a 35-yard score.
White also ended the Jays' night on a positive note, intercepting a deep pass against Hickman.
Fellow receiver Levi Jobe got open in the middle of the field for a 35-yard score against the Kewpies. Jobe was also among the Jays playing both ways.
"I think the kids are doing better with it," Walker said. "It's just a work in progress. We've got to get the best players on the field and that's what we're trying to do."
Roberson worked mostly on quick passes with a couple deep shots thrown in. He completed 9-of-17 passes with two touchdowns.
"We were very limited with the stuff that we were doing," Walker said. "There were areas in the passing game that I thought we executed OK and then there were times the receiver and the quarterback were not on the same sheet of music and that's got to get fixed."
The Jays' defense was able to get to the quarterback twice against the Bruins. Defensive ends Corey Suttle and Jordan Bruner teamed up for the first takedown.
"The D-line is where we have the most experience and we're most inexperienced on the back end in the secondary," Walker said. "There were some positives but our ball awareness still needs to improve and understanding of gap discipline and gap control needs to improve."
Jefferson City begins the regular season next Friday against Kirkwood.
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Adkins Stadium.