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Coffee County football got its region slate started with a win Friday night.

Hosting Franklin for their homecoming game, the Red Raiders came out on top in a low-scoring battle to win 7-6 over the Admirals. The victory additionally got Coffee County back to .500 on the season, after back-to-back home losses against Tullahoma and Wilson Central the previous two weeks.

“Really (the difference maker) was last week. It was being in that nail-biter (against Wilson Central) last week and really spending a lot of time this week looking at what we could’ve done better, not only on the field, but as coaches as well. I felt like our kids responded tremendously this week. We learned from it and we had a lot of young guys grow up this week. Then you lose a senior starter at running back the first play of the night and Tez Garrett came in as a sophomore and had a tremendous night,” Coffee County coach Brandon Harmon said. “Our guys are gonna battle. We expected it be one. (Franklin) is a good football team. We expected it to be like it was with them and Shelbyville last week. A tight game, neck-and-neck. Our kids, I love the resilience of them, to take last week, and learn from it and grow.”

Franklin got on the board early, capping off its second drive of the game with a 3-yard scamper into the end zone. A miscue on the ensuing Admiral PAT kept the game at 6-0, a score that remained in place through both the end of the first quarter and the end of the first half.

Still looking to answer late in the third quarter, Coffee County got the ball back after the previous Franklin drive stalled out around midfield.

Starting off on the Red Raider 21-yard line, quarterback Kaysen Lowery heaved a deep pass downfield to Kane Dixon, who hauled it in and took off for the end zone to put Coffee County on the board. This time, the extra point attempt was good and gave the Red Raiders a one-point lead with 3:48 left in the quarter.

“We’d been doing our homework all week. We knew their backside safety didn’t back up as much,” Dixon said of game-changing catch. “We’d really been waiting on it all game and we just told our QB just to let it ride.”

The Coffee County defense did not let Franklin score again through the game’s remainder, while the offense did enough on the team’s final drive to kneel it and run out the clock to zero when it was time to do so.

“A lot of times, when you’ve got young guys, they’ve just got to have some kind of confidence building, so for us, we pretty much made this a must-win all week. That’s what we preached as a staff to our kids,” Harmon said. “It was the best week of practice we’ve had in some time and we’re just continuing to grow as a team. 1-0 in the region is huge. Like I told them, now you’re not digging from a hole at the very beginning of region play.”

Coffee County (2-2) will continue its region schedule with a road trip to Independence next week. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.