HOLTVILLE’S ADKINS HAVING BREAKOUT JUNIOR SEASON

By DALTON MIDDLETON Sports Editor

out season for the Bulldogs.

Through four games of the 2022 football season, Adkins has already more than doubled his production from sophomore season.

The Bulldogs’ leading receiver has recorded 16 catches for 218 yards and four touchdowns this year, with his longest catching coming at 41 yards.

He’s been the team’s biggest threat at receiver, and that’s a big change from a sophomore season where he only had eight catches and two touchdowns in 11 games.

“He’s running great routes and he’s running his routes full speed,” Holtville coach Jason Franklin said of Adkins. “He’s learned the offense and that was the thing he struggled with last year. He’s been counted on to learn and know what he’s supposed to do, and he took responsibility this offseason to do that. Erik took it wholeheartedly to take time to learn the offense and get quality reps all summer.”

Adkins’ strength is his speed, and he can run past nearly anybody in the state and certainly most in the area. That was what he would do during his sophomore season to try and get open, but learning the playbook has helped him utilize his speed as team’s target him.

He used to just try to run past defensive backs, but that isn’t the case this year. Defensive backs are playing off of him, not allowing him to race past them quickly off the line of scrimmage.

So now he’s having to adjust what he does. He says when he gets to the center point of his route and gets ready to break, he will sometimes stutter or try and throw the defensive back off and try to get him to pause.

For Adkins’ speed, any split second of pause can be the difference in a touchdown.

“I’m getting open a lot more this year than I did last year,” Adkins said. “I’m more confident on the field and I feel like that’s one of the biggest reasons why. I also have my speed, but a lot of guys have been playing off of me so I have to add a few things and improve my routes to keep getting open.”

Most receivers have the simplicity of just working with one single starting quarterback and they can learn the timing and how the quarterback throws the ball.

But Adkins is putting up the numbers he is putting up with Holtville using two quarterbacks behind center. The Bulldogs are using senior Tanner Potts and sophomore Keiland Baker, and both have played significant minutes this year.

Potts has completed 28 of his 43 pass attempts for 371 yards and one touchdown, while Baker has completed 7 of 12 passes for 88 yards and three touchdowns.

Adkins doesn’t feel like there’s any timing issues with either of them, and he feels completely on the same page with both, no matter which is in the game.

Franklin agrees, as he sees the timing work with both quarterbacks. That comes from the receivers catching passes and running routes with the quarterbacks for nearly two hours every practice.

“Our receivers get so many passes from each quarterback every day that they know how each one throws it and they know where the ball is going to be when they run their routes,” Franklin said. “They don’t have to worry about that.”