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Julius Chambers High is shooting for the school's third straight North Carolina 4A football title when the Cougars take on Cardinal Gibbons Saturday in Raleigh.

Julius Chambers High’s task in Saturday’s state 4A football title game is simple: No mistakes.

The Cougars, who play Cardinal Gibbons for the championship Saturday at Carter-Finley Stadium, have been prone to miscues in the past – especially penalties – but have overcome them in racking up a 14-1 record and a fourth straight West Region title. One of those wins was a 35-29 decision against the Crusaders in the season opener.

“Play fundamentally sound,” coach Glenwood Ferebee said Monday in a meeting with statewide media. “We can’t afford to make mistakes. We can’t afford to have a bunch of penalties. I think if we can eliminate that, I think we’ll be fine.”

Chambers, which has won four straight regional championships, has been on a roll since losing 16-10 to Hough in September and are peaking at the right time of the season. They spotted Hough a 14-point third-quarter lead in last week’s regional final but reeled off 28 straight points to win 35-21 to hand the Huskies their first loss of the year. Although the Cougars are a younger team, Ferebee believes that win showed a maturity to play well in every phase.

“The game is never out of reach,” he said, “if you play hard, and play determined and play with passion, and I think that’s what my kids learned. My team is still young. I don’t think people realize how young we actually are, so that game forced us to grow up a little bit overnight. I think the moment is not going to be too big for our kids this week coming up because we just had one of the biggest moments of the year having to come back from 14 down to a great Hough football team that could have easily represented us in the state finals themselves.”

“We’ve been penalized a lot over the past few years, and I think we’ve cleaned that up,” he said. “The season, starting from the beginning to now, we haven’t been penalized as much down here, so hopefully we can go down to Raleigh and have a clean game and make sure we play the game the right way.”

Chambers is ready for one last challenge, said Ferebee, who has earned two state titles in his first two years on the job. The possibility of going 3-for-3 and building a powerhouse program is something he never imagined when he took over.

“I knew coming into the job that I was going to have a pretty good football team in the first year, but to see the talent that’s coming out each year, it just surreal man,” he said. “Just to be in this position is surreal. And it still hasn’t sunk in yet.”

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