It’s not often that a home loss positively impacts a team more than winning, but that’s exactly what seems to have happened to Porters Chapel Academy following last week’s defeat to Hartfield Academy.

The Eagles lost 33-19 and had some of their most glaring weaknesses exposed, but it afforded them the opportunity to both realize those shortcomings and improve them heading into Friday’s matchup against Newton Academy.

“As bad as you hate to lose, it’s just a matter of sometimes losing exposes different areas and different things that you need to work on. A part of ours was discipline, going through the motions in practice, and it’s the coaches’ fault. It’s all of our coaches’ faults, especially me,” PCA coach Wayne Lynch said. “It’s our fault for allowing them to be lackadaisical. It’s our fault for not pushing them hard enough in practice and that translated into the game Friday.”

Just days removed from calling out his coaching staff and players for a lack of leadership and direction, Lynch praised the way they’ve bounced back in practice this week. Instead of laying down, he said, they’ve decided to emphatically jump back up.

“(Monday) was the first signs of a team coming together. Obviously at a small school like this when you have transfers coming in, there’s kind of personality differences and cultural differences and things like that that you have to somehow mesh and bring together,” he said. “We had struggled with it prior to this week and I think (Monday) we hashed all that out and I think from this point forward, we are definitely on the right page.”

The loss brought the team closer together and also showcased a deep running back corps, one that ran roughshod over Hartfield en route to more than 160 yards and a score. It was a pleasant and surprising silver lining that translated to the installation of an I formation for PCA this week as Lynch’s squad looks to build on the momentum it’s built on the ground.

The new look on offense will be one that eerily mirrors that of Newton, a team that works to pound the ball up the middle and control the flow of the game.

“We’re going to look a little bit more at it and see if it’s something we might want to try to go to at times,” he said. “Overall, I was very, very pleased with our running game.”

On the radio

Friday, 7 p.m., 104.5 FM

PCA at Newton Academy