Pleasant Home is confident it will provide a competitive edge to its area play next January.

The Eagles went 0-4 in area play last year, but Pleasant Home coach Jerry Davis said he feels that his team has a chance to win their area.

“I feel like we’re going to be pretty competitive in it this time,” Davis said. “We were last year, but we just came up a few points short. I feel like we’ve got a pretty good shot at possibly winning the thing.

“So far when we’re playing our league, we’re all right. We played out of our league, and four of our losses were out of our league. Two of them were to Andalusia and the other two were to Charles Henderson and a school out of Pensacola.”

McKenzie, Florala and Kinston make up the teams in Pleasant Home’s area.

Davis said area games will be very competitive.

“Brantley’s not in it for one thing,” he said. “They’ve moved over, and Florala’s going through a down time right now. They’ve been a powerhouse for the last seven or eight years in our area.

“McKenzie is very athletic,” he said. “Kinston has a couple of kids who, on any given night, can light you up. I think it’s going to be a very competitive area. I like our chances.”

Davis said he made some changes to his team before the holiday break to ready the Eagles for area competition.

“Overall, we’re a little bit quicker and able to pressure the ball a bit more,” he said. “If our shooting holds up, we’ll feel pretty good about it.

“We’re doing what we can with what we’ve got,” he said. “I feel very comfortable at this point in time about the things that our kids are doing. We made some severe changes this past week in practice, but it just doesn’t happen overnight. I know we’ve been struggling on some things, but those kids had only practiced that for a couple days. I feel like that in the long haul, it’ll help us in what we’re doing.”

Before Pleasant Home gets under way in their area play, the Eagles will be hosting the Alabama-Florida shootout today and Saturday.

Their first area game will be Monday, when they host McKenzie.