From sports staff
The Daily Citizen
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It’s crunch time for high school football teams all across Georgia — in more ways than one.
Peach State programs make the transition from offseason to preseason this week, signaling the final month of preparation for the 2010 regular season, which starts for most teams on Aug. 27.
This week is also those teams’ first chance to get back into full pads since spring practice and do some of the full-contact hitting that — even in an age of summer team camps, passing leagues and comprehensive weightlifting and speed training — signals the approach of kickoff.
While Sunday was the first day of “official practice” allowed for Georgia High School Association teams, most area teams won’t hit the field for the first official practice until today. They’ll be allowed to train in full pads all but two of the first five days of practice, per GHSA rules, with those two days chosen at each team’s discretion.
Here’s a glance at how each of our six local prep football teams plan to handle the first week of official practice:
Christian Heritage
Christian Heritage, like the other teams in the Glory For Christ League, got a jumpstart on its Georgia High School Association counterparts, starting its official preparations for the 2010 season this past week. For the last week, the Lions have been going through workouts in helmets and shorts and will start slapping pads on this morning.
Unlike some of the area’s GHSA schools, Christian Heritage will not be going through two-a-day practices as the Lions prepare for their season opener.
Because some of his players are home-schooled and practice with Christian Heritage from locations as far away as Tennessee and Rome, coach Mike Vaden said his team will hold morning practices once a day until the school year starts. The other advantage of that is that the Lions avoid the heat.
While things may not be hot that time of day, Vaden is looking forward to seeing his players start popping each other.
“They are ready to hit each other,” Vaden said. “We’ve got some kids that are excited about this season. We have a good group of seniors and some quality younger players as well. We are excited.”
The Lions are still trying to figure out their preseason schedule, attempting to convince a pair of teams to come to town for a jamboree on Aug. 20.
Dalton
Matt Land didn’t want to miss a single day of preparation for his first season leading the Catamounts. And if things went according to plan, they’ll already have two days of camp behind them by this morning.
Dalton planned to make the trip Saturday to Alabama’s Jacksonville State University, where the Cats were to spend the afternoon in meetings and “family time” designed to set expectations for this week’s camp, which concludes on Wednesday. On Sunday, the Cats intended to be up with the sun for a full day that included practices at 6 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and an evening scrimmage.
“Our first full day will be in pads because we don’t want to waste a day,” Land said last week. “So we’ll start out in full pads and, to be honest with you, our practice schedule will stay the same. The days we’re not in pads will be a little more focused on the conditioning and mental part more than the days in full pads. Those will be geared toward our physicalness and our toughness.”
Time away from the field will be either focused on team or group meetings or recovery in order to be ready for the next practice, Land said.
While far fewer teams than once did hold overnight, out-of-town camps these days, it remains a priority for the Cats, who were forced to switch locations from Bell Buckle, Tenn., this year because of unfinished renovations at the Webb School. Land said going away to camp allows isolation from distractions as well as better control of attendance and promptness, in addition to attention to rest and nutrition.
But there’s one more reason it’s important, too.
“At Dalton, quite honestly, it’s a rite of passage,” Land said. “We’ve always gone off to football camp. Our players’ dads and granddads and five of our coaches have gone off to camp. Part of being a Catamount is going off to camp and really focusing and spending that time as a team.”
Murray County
With a summer full of quality workouts, second-year Murray County coach John Zeigler is anxious to see some differences on the field.
“We’ve got to decide and establish and raise the bar a little bit,” said Zeigler, whose team went 2-8 last season. “What are you going to do today to be better than you were when you showed up today? They are great kids and they work hard, but there have been a lot of great kids that have worked hard that haven’t reached their goal.”
The biggest concern for Zeigler is not a lack of talent, but a lack of game experience. The Indians have a large senior class coming in, but they must replace most of the starting lines on both sides of the ball as well as try to make strides on the defensive side. Murray County allowed an average of 28.5 points per game last year, and that included a shutout in the season opener.
“We’ve got a lot of holes to fill up front both offensively and defensively,” Zeigler said. “The people up front are older kids, but they don’t have a lot of experience. We have a lot of talented players, but we don’t know how they are going to respond, especially on defense.”
Murray County should have plenty of time to develop that talent. While other schools around the area start as early as Aug. 13, Murray County Schools won’t start back until after Labor Day. That means that the Indians and North Murray will have played two games and a scrimmage before the first day of school.
It also means that those two schools can make extensive use of two-a-day practices with one in the morning and the other in the evening.
“We have to come together as one unit,” Ziegler said. “All of these kids that we have coming back work hard. We just have to get them together in one unit playing together.”
North Murray
The Mountaineers wasted no time starting preparations for their first varsity season.
Coach Larry Cornelius sent his players through their first preseason workout Sunday night from 9:30 p.m. to 11:59. They spent the night at school and have two more sessions today.
“Georgia High School Association says you can start practice on Aug. 1,” Cornelius said. “We need to take advantage of every opportunity to get on the practice field.”
The coach said there were brief discussions about whether to attend an off-campus camp, but they led nowhere because of financial concerns.
“We had an umbrella booster club last year and that really didn’t work out,” he said. “We switched to a football Touchdown Club in the spring and money is coming in now. Camps are very expensive. We just don’t have the funds right now, but we’ll talk about it again next year.”
For the next two weeks, starting today, the Mountaineers will practice at 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., with three sessions each day.
“It’s impossible to beat the heat unless you become nocturnal and go late at night,” Cornelius said. “I’ve been in this area a while now and it’s I believe it’s hottest between 3 and 6 o’clock. We need to be off the field by 1 o’clock and our last session will probably be inside without pads lifting weights.”
Cornelius said in the week leading up to the Mountaineers’ season-opening game against Heritage-Catoosa on Aug. 27 at 7:30 p.m. at home, he will practice his team at night.
“We can do some creative things since we don’t start school until Sept. 7,” he said. “Our kids are very positive and itching to get out there. The offense wants to pancake some people. The defense wants to crack somebody. We’ll find out who wants to win and who doesn’t.”
Northwest Whitfield
Mike Falleur has been a head football coach in Georgia since 1992, long enough to know there’s as much evil as necessary about the intensity and difficulty of the first week of official practice.
He believes most of his players do, too — certainly the experienced ones, anyway.
“Nobody looks forward to the two-a-day part of it, but they understand the importance of what we have to do,” said Falleur, who is prepping for his ninth season at Northwest Whitfield. “We have to do it as good as we can and get through that part of it.”
But Falleur expects the Bruins to be ready nonetheless. That was the aim of a fairly busy summer schedule designed to condition players to practice that included lifting weight three times a week in June; attending separate camps for linemen, quarterbacks and receivers, and defense; and passing league competitions.
During that time, Falleur said, he learned quite a bit about who should be starting for now and who can help add depth at certain positions.
“I think our kids are really excited,” Falleur said. “They’ve done a great job.”
The Bruins will go through their first two days of practice, beginning today, in “shells” — helmets, shoulder pads and shorts — before switching to full pads on Wednesday, the lone day this week when they won’t practice twice.
Today, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday they’ll have a first session from 7 to 10 a.m. focused on the running game both offensively and defensively, with time allotted to install new material. A second session from 7 to 10 p.m. will be focused on passing, perimeter running plays, special teams and conditioning.
“For us, this week is really about getting back in the groove of wearing pads and, unfortunately, being in very hot temperatures,” Falleur said. “That’s why we’re going morning and night, to stay out of it for as long as we can and start repping things we’re going to do and try to get good at them as quick as we can.”
Southeast Whitfield
Coach David Crane is starting his third season with the Raiders, and his squad has progressed to the point that it’s markedly ahead of the curve in terms of how the players and coaches approach preseason practice.
“This is the first year we haven’t sat down as a staff and done an install plan because we’ve done that,” Crane said. “Through our spring and summer work, we’ve got enough in to play a game. That’s a big plus. What we’ve got to do now is get real physical on both sides of the ball.”
Crane says the Raiders’ defense is in pretty much the same situation.
“We won’t have to spend a lot of time installing stuff on defense or offense,” Crane said. “Like I said, we just have to increase the level of physical play. A lot of that is because we’re young up front on offense. We’ve got two or three guys back who got a lot of playing time last year on defense – Jose Ortiz, Melvin Ariaiza and Jayro Perez.
The Raiders will begin preseason drills today at 8 a.m., return for a second session at 6:30 p.m. and continue two-a-days through Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday, the Raiders will practice at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., spending the night in the gymnasium both nights in their mini-camp.
A scrimmage is scheduled Friday night and the players will go home at noon on Saturday.
“Our kids are ready to build off what we did last year (a 5-5 record, the school’s first non-losing season in 17 years),” Crane said. “That’s a point of emphasis for us. I’m excited. It’s going to be an interesting year because we’re so young.”
— Compiled by Larry Fleming, Marty Kirkland and Chris Whitfield.
