Coach Comments-End of Season

The Vikes played in the maximum number of local qualifying tournaments (7) this season. This allowed us to get a lot of additional “reps” since there was no spring football at Lamar due to the coaching change. We won the 5th SQT of the season but continued to go participate even after qualifying.

Every year when we receive our “pool” opponents, I do research on each of the three teams to try and get a feel for them prior to traveling to College Station. One of the items of note was that the three of them combined had only participated in five state qualifying tournaments compared to our seven! It is possible they had scrimmages with other teams but that is a lot of extra reps by our kids in a game environment. As you would expect it was hot and humid in College Station and our pool games started at 1 pm and ended about 5 pm. Our conditioning played a big part in our 2-1 record. It was noticeable in our last game versus Garland. They have at least 4 D-1 recruits and were very athletic. But over the course of the game our conditioning really paid off and we won the game.

Most everyone that follows 7 on 7 in the state knows about Lamar’s 23 qualifications in a row. What is not as known, but perhaps more impressive, is we have advanced to the Championship Bracket 19 out of 23 years. This means we finished 1st or 2nd in a 4-team pool 83% of the time over nearly a quarter of a century! Every school in the tournament won a state qualifying tournament just to get to College Station. In other words, “we don’t just qualify we compete” year in and year out. Great job Vikings!

On Saturday we drew a truly impressive Austin Westlake team in the first game of a single elimination tournament. Their QB recently committed to Clemson, and he has led the Chapparals to TWO Class 6-A State Football Championships in a row and will try to threepeat this upcoming season. The final score was 55-34 so we were very competitive; we just could not quite match their offensive firepower.

Overall, I think this season did three things: 1. Bonded the players after a rough pandemic year and a change of football staffs; 2. Gave them literally hundreds of reps in game type situations and 3. Handled the pressure of maintaining the mantle as the only team in Texas to qualify every season. It is a very exclusive Club and they joined it. Our job is to send them back to fall football better than when we started with them in March, and I believe we accomplished that.

BIG Thanks to Angie Morris as our volunteer coordinator; her energy level and enthusiasm is unmatched. Also, KUDOS to Julian, Spencer, Barry, Chris, and JR for another excellent job of coaching up these players to perform at such a high level. I am pleased to report that EACH of them has agreed to come back in 2022 to go for 24 in a row. VFND!

Jim Poynter