Cameron Boyd made the move from quarterback to wide receiver as the 2011 season progressed to help bring another dimension to the Eastside football team.

As the 2012 season gets ready to begin Boyd is firmly planted out wide and showed Friday night that he could have a big senior year.

Boyd caught three passes, including a touchdown as Eastside traveled to Heritage for a preseason exhibition game.
The game featured one half of varsity play, which saw Heritage lead 17-14, before yielding to the junior varsity in the third quarter - the Patriots again took that one 20-7 - and then the freshman in a fourth quarter that saw no scoring.
Eastside coach Rick Hurst said he was pleased with the varsity's performance despite the score.

"I felt like we did some really good things offensively, but have some work to do defensively," Hurst said.

The Eagles gave up a couple of big pass plays in the second quarter, including one that set up a touchdown inside the 20-yard line.

However, Eastside also had a couple of big pass plays of its own, thanks to quarterback Demario Terrell.

"He threw the ball real well, had about 150 yards passing in the first half," Hurst said. "He threw a touchdown, and also threw a pick but made some really nice throws."

Terrell, a junior, took over at quarterback about eight games into the 2011 season and will begin 2012 as the Eagles' signal caller.

That leaves Boyd free to do damage at the wide receiver position.

"I think he found his niche," said Hurst about the senior receiver. "I think he found where he's going to be successful for us."

Leading the way defensively was defensive end Antonious Sims and the rest of the defensive line.

Sims is not only one of Eastside's top players, but heading into this season will be one of the area's best as he is drawing interest from several top tier Division I schools as one of the state's biggest recruits.

Safety Frank Johnson also came up big on the Eagles' defense, providing one of the few bright spots in the secondary.

"I didn't feel real good about it (Friday night)," Hurst said. "Frank Johnson had an interception and a couple of tackles at safety, but other than that we didn't make a whole lot of plays.

"We have to step up and make plays."

The Eagles offensive line also looked good, according to Hurst, providing quality passing lanes for Terrell throughout the evening against Heritage.

"The offensive line, I thought the pass protection was really good."

Hurst said he wasn't as pleased with the junior varsity unit, which gave up 20 points, and would like to see work from his special teams unit, which didn't get much action Friday.

The special teams units were relegated to field goal and punt opportunities in the exhibition game, and even those phases weren't situations involving live tackling.

"That's part of the game and something you have to excel in," Hurst said. "We gave up punt blocks last year that cost us a couple of football games."

The Eagles will have a little less than two weeks to work on their special teams and all aspects of their game before facing Newton on Aug. 31 at Sharp Stadium.