As high school football practice for the 2025 season got underway on Monday, the local coaches have a lot of things they would like to see their players get done during the first week, which saw players go in helmets and shorts beginning Monday. After donning only helmets and shorts through Thursday, players will go in full pads on Friday.
“There’s going to be some new faces along the line mainly,” Vian coach Gary Willis said. “We’re going to try to get into that rhythm. The quicker you get into the rhythm offensively, the faster we can get guys into the right positions and get our timing down. That’s the main thing. We’re going to need to get conditioned. Even though we’ve been working out, it’s different than football (practice) — getting the pads on (for Friday’s practice) in the heat.”
“We’re just going to do the basics,” Gore coach Brandon Ellis said. “It’s basically going to be a big refresher course for the first two weeks. We’re not going to throw anything at them that they can’t handle as far as teaching wise. We don’t want to go fast because we don’t want to move on to anything that they don’t understand. It’s really going to be elementary. We don’t want to bombard them with a lot of new stuff all at once. My guys learn better bits and pieces at a time. It’s going to be learning at a slower pace. We’ll take this time to get into shape and get acclimated to the weather.”
“Whenever you start out, it’s kind of like you’re starting over from spring and reiterating the things you put in during spring,” Central coach Jeremy Thompson said. “It’s a lot of your base alignment on defense — your base coverage. Offensively, it’s your base formations. There’s a lot of things that you’re reiterating things that the kids think they already know. On both sides of the ball, you’re working on things you’re wanting to do, like alignment. The things you did in the spring, you just go over them again — the base stuff you’re trying to do on both sides of the ball. After Week 1 (of practice), you start prepping for Week 2 and the rest of the season. You have to know going into Week 1 (of the regular season), that what you want to have in (place), you need to have in by the end of Week 1 (of practice). We’re ready to get started.”
“We’re going to see who we got,” Webbers Falls coach Trent Holt said. “We’re going to try to see what offense and defense we’re going to try to run. If we don’t (find something), we’re going to have to try something else. We went to team camp. We put in a defense we always run, but I don’t think we have the linebackers to do it. On Day 2 (of team camp), we switched defenses into a defense in which we’ll probably end up being in. We’re still iffy on our running backs.”
