Just about, if not all, high school football coaches and players have been waiting for Aug. 11 to arrive — and did Monday, which was the first day of organized practice for this upcoming 2025 season.

“We’re ready to go,” Gore coach Brandon Ellis said. “We had coaches meetings all this week, finalizing stuff for next week. We’re ready to get back in it (football). We’re ready for a routine. The kids are excited. They’ve worked hard all summer. These guys who are going to be seniors, it’s all new to them because they’re going to be taking on a leadership role. They’re ready to make it their own.”

“I think everybody is ready to get started,” Central coach Jeremy Thompson said. “We’ll come in during the mornings and do a little bit of conditioning, then hit the fields in the evenings. When you get past June and get into July, you feel like you’re ready for it (football) to go ahead and start. Our workouts have been good. Summer (Pride) was good. The kids have worked extremely hard. They’re ready to get the football out and play.”

“The coaches are probably a bit more excited than the kids,” Webbers Falls coach Trent Holt said. “The kids are going to be the ones really working. This last week, we’ve been doing some running, just some conditioning type stuff. We’ve had a pretty good turnout. We’re pretty excited. It seems like the kids are ready to get going.”

For the Vian Wolverines, who made the Class 2A, Division II State Championship Game and lost to Davis, Aug. 11 couldn’t get here fast enough.

“We’ve got a lot of seniors that are back,” Vian coach Gary Willis said. “We had a great summer in the weight room and in conditioning. They’re ready to go I think. The turf (at St. John Stadium) is still not done, so we’ll be practicing out at the youth fields probably. It’s different, but we’ll take it.”

In the 1980s and further back, what we know as “Summer Pride” was truly not in existence, where football teams basically have workouts for two months — separated by “Dead Week” near the end of June into early July. All the local coaches said having a “Summer Pride” is huge in trying to get their players to be the best they can be.

“Summer is huge now,” said Willis, whose Wolverines were slated to have their first practice at 3 p.m. Monday if the heat cooperated. “Around Memorial Day, we took three days off. Then, we got into the weight room. We took the ‘Dead Week’ off. These guys had about a week and a half off all summer. They’ve been getting up at 6:30 a.m. and getting after it. It’s done a lot of them a lot of good — you can physically see the difference. It (Summer Pride) is very important.”

“We feel like where we are right now, we’re ahead of the curve because we do (summer) camps, spring ball and passing leagues,” said Ellis, whose Pirates had practice No. 1 from 7-9 p.m. Monday. “We’re around our kids all summer and around them more in this day of coaching than we ever have been. It (summer) is like a mini vacation compared to back in the day where it was a long (summer) vacation. Work ethic and team camaraderie is there. What makes everything gel together is actually when school starts because everybody is around everybody all the time (during Summer Pride), then we all get back into that routine.”

“It keeps the kids in shape,” said Thompson, whose Tigers began their first practice of the season at 7 p.m. Monday. “Over the summer, you want to get stronger and faster. Throughout the month of June, there’s 7-on-7s. It’s one of those things where you know you’re prepping yourself to be the best you can whenever you get started (with football) and the official starting date. There comes a point in there where everybody is getting really anxious to get started.”

“I was fairly pleased (with Summer Pride) for the ones who made it,” said Holt, whose Warriors will commence practice at 6-7 p.m. Monday, at least to this point. “For the ones who have been up here, I can tell a difference. Once we start (practice), they’ll be glad they took the time to do it (Summer Pride). We tell them that all the time. ‘You need to do stuff. Practice won’t be as hard (if you do).’”