Coaches Corner #2
4/27/2022
Last Saturday we made the hour+ drive to Melissa HS. Melissa is a fast growing community just south of Sherman. The team did a great job of getting to Lamar by 6:15 am especially considering they had spring football last week so they were probably a bit more tired than usual.
We knew this would be a challenging tournament for us for two reasons. First, we were missing 7 players; 5 due to baseball and 2 with injuries. At this time of the year spring sports (track, baseball) are the priority. The 7 on 7 season really starts in mid-May and goes through June. The second challenge was spring football. Many of the teams competing at Melissa had not yet started spring tackle football. After a week of practice (in pads for part) it typically makes for tired legs and some muscle soreness compared to the teams who had not started spring practice. It was our opinion though that the benefit of competing and figuring out "where we are" as a team at many positions was worth the trip in spite of the obvious challenges.
We were particularly short-handed on offense. None of our quarterbacks were available so we moved perhaps our best athlete Darrick "Trey" Bledsoe to quarterback. Trey is one of our best receivers so moving him to QB left us shorthanded at the receiver position along with Jaylon Humbles and Keegan Kelly who were not available.
Defensively, we were in a little better position in terms of available players but were down two starters in Cooper Barnard and Braylon Cole.
We played three games and were competitive in all three, particularly on defense. We struggled more on offense but really it was not a "fair fight" with that many key players missing.
So what were the takeaways? Our effort and attitude all day was excellent. The players recognized the obvious challenges and dealt with it in the right way. Another positive was playing in a highly competitive pool, so we now know what we have to work on to win at future tournaments. Once we have our "full deck" of players we will be able to play at a "Viking" level. We have two more Saturday practices before our next SQT on 5/14 at Arlington High. Baseball conflicts are over and hopefully we will get a couple of our injured guys back as well. Now we just need to put in the work and get ready!
Great group of guys on this team!
VFND
Coach Poynter
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