|
|
|
|
|
|
With spring football practices set for this month, we were wondering if coaches have different philosophies as far as what they hope to accomplish. So we asked four coaches, how do you plan to spend your 10 practices?
|
|
With spring football practices set for this month, we were wondering if coaches have different philosophies as far as what they hope to accomplish. So we asked four coaches, how do you plan to spend your 10 practices?
|
|
Darrell Henry
Fort Smith Northside Football
|
|
What we do is try to let everybody get done with spring sports, so we go in May during the last two weeks that are possible. Now, we may not even get in our 10 days because we will run out of time. But it’s very valuable to us because it’s another 10 days that you can put pads on and go out and do technique drills and really learn how to do it at a speed that’s comparable to the games. I don’t have any desire in spring ball to find out who the toughest or meanest is. We’re not trying to beat them up by being as physical as we can be. My desire is to get better at the skills we’re trying to use in the fall. Some of those skills you can’t really work on in shorts. Some drills you need the pads on to see how it’s going to really go in a game. But it’s not a matter of who’s the biggest and toughest. Most the time, you already know that is anyway.
|
|
Barry Lunney Sr.
Bentonville Football
|
|
Everybody has the same problem of working around athletes with spring sports, so the scheduling thing is a little tricky with 15 days to get it all in. The addition of the extra five days in pads will really benefit the linemen. They get shortchanged in 7-on-7s where a skill person can get a lot of good out of it. They’ve got to lockup, pass rush and pass set and get down and dirty. This will give our linemen a little bit more of a head start. Having a number of starters back on defense, we can afford not to push them as hard and build depth on defense with our younger players. Offensive, it’s a new game and new faces. Those guys will get a whole bunch of looks. Our situation may be like someone else’s, but we want to develop depth on defensive side. We have to find out if some of the guys on offense are going to be there, too.
|
|
Jeff Williams
Fort Smith Southside Football
|
|
You want to evaluate your football team in every aspect at every position. You’re also looking for depth, not just starters, so you’re evaluating the key backup guys and the special teams guys. You’re getting chances to work sophomores and see if the are ready or not to play at that level. But the main thing is that w get our team efficient and get our schemes in so they’re more familiar to our football team.
|
|
Daryl Patton
Fayetteville Football
|
|
The way we do it is start the first of May and we’ll go out in a T-shirt, shorts and helmet for 6 or 7 practices. We’re just getting their mind out of weight room and get their feet wet. We do a lot of teaching, especially with young kids. There’s lots of areas to find players that we have to address in a hurry. Then, we’ll go May 16-30 with our spring game on the 30th. We’ll get eight good practices in and then divide things up on 9th day and go in shoulder pads and shorts. We’ll have a pretty good scrimmage in our 8th practice that we’ll get on tape. We then divide them up for purple-white and have a fun day to draft kids and draft coaches. We’ll even divide up the cheerleaders if we can, make it as fun as possible. With 170 kids, it can be a pretty entertaining game.
|
|
|
|
|
|
™
