Like previous weeks during his tenure of coaching Richmond varsity 11-man football, Nick Persell gave his Spartans a word for this week to help them prepare for Friday’s road meeting with Lafayette County of Higginsville.

The word was “discipline.” Persell was prompted to make it the word for the week because of the Spartans’ performance during their 53-8 Sept. 18 road loss to Odessa, he said.

“From a football perspective, it’s discipline in all your assignments and the stuff that you learn from Day 1 of walking into football, which we didn’t always do on Friday night that well,” Persell said Monday. “We had some pre-snap penalties – on defense and on offense both – that really hurt us in some critical times early in that first half and made it really tough for us to compete with a really good team.”

The Spartans, however, were disciplined enough defensively to make a fourth-down stand on Odessa’s opening possession of the livestreamed clash. Starting from their own 25-yard line, the Bull…