Practice ramps up in week two
Aug. 9—As high school football practice moves into its second week, area teams will soon be turning their focus to their first scrimmages.
Whitesboro coach Cody Fagan said practice has gone great for the Bearcats so far.
"The UIL allowing us to do practices in July for an hour with those sports-specific deals has really put us ahead of any time in my whole career of where we are knowledge-wise," Fagan said. "I really feel like offense, defense, special teams, schematically, we're where we were towards middle of district last year."
Every school approaches the summer differently. Whitesboro spent its sports-specific time in June working on basketball and baseball, then turned its full attention to football in July.
Senior lineman Jacob Castillo said the July work has helped tremendously.
"We're picking it up pretty quick," Castillo said. "We started earlier than we did last year, so we're a lot farther ahead than we were. We're all working hard out here, JV, varsity. We've got a lot of kids out here, and we're getting every single one of them some reps in, and it's going good."
Everyone is wearing full pads in practice now. Full contact isn't allowed the first four days of practice to allow the players to acclimate to playing football again. With that period now completed, contact and physicality will ramp up during the second week.
Era coach Terry Felderhoff said physicality will be a big focus this week as the Hornets prepare for their first scrimmage.
"The first week is a lot of mental," Felderhoff said. "As you go, the physicality comes with it. So, that's (this) week. That'll be huge, being full pads, being out in the afternoon. That in itself is mental also, handling the little change in temperature. It's just the physicality and carrying our pads and the full contact and everything else to prepare for that first scrimmage."
Gainesville will be the first area team to scrimmage when the Leopards travel to Fort Worth Castleberry on Thursday. All other area teams scrimmage Friday. Era will host Trenton, and Whitesboro will host Bonham.
Era senior Jarren Twiner said the Hornets have a few things to do before the first scrimmage, but the first week of practice went as well as it could.
"It's been the best first week of practice I've had since I've been in high school two-a-days, so can't complain," Twiner said. "Everybody's work ethic is just way better than it's been, and people aren't scared to put in work."
Felderhoff said scrimmages aren't a big deal, but the Hornets need to keep executing plays they way they did last week now that full contact is allowed.
"Scrimmages are glorified practices." Felderhoff said. "That's what I tell them. We're just practicing against somebody else. But still, it's different, because you're not going against each other. You've got somebody else across from you, so that changes the excitement level a little bit."
As practice drags on, the players must keep up their energy and continue to practice well as they enter the second week and beyond. Fagan said the Bearcats gave all-out effort the first week and need to continue that this week.
"I just want to see more of the consistency that they've shown," Fagan said. "Obviously, schematically, you want to see the schemes get a little smoother. Obviously, we know what to do. We know where we're going, but I want to see them know why I'm going here, why I'm doing these things to help this play work and to help the other ten guys on the field get their job done."
Era opens the regular season at Nocona, while Whitesboro will travel to Krum. Both games are scheduled for Aug. 26.
