Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

I’ve been making football calls this morning. Can you believe it? Of course, for some of you, I’m running behind on those calls, right?

But Jonathan and I are serious about giving you faithful blog readers and posters, along with the lurkers and the ones who still need to discover this site, a place to come to throughout the summer.

So here’s my first installment. I talked to several football coaches — Heights, East, Derby, Independent and Conway Springs — this morning about what’s going on in the summer. And this is what I’ve gotten so far. (Keep in mind that a coach can work with six kids at one time on football, conditioning and weight-room run all summer.)

Heights — The Falcons are at a team camp in Tulsa. I know this because I called Rick Wheeler to get the first day of football practice info (Aug. 18) and he was about to get his team out there. I’ll be chatting with him later about the summer.

East — Coach Brian Byers said that the Aces held their team camp at school last week and are heading to Pittsburg State on Wednesday for a camp. I thought our kids were a lot more focused in camp. we got a lot of our stuff put in then we had last year.

Here’s some of what he told me about East’s team camp last week: “We’re light years ahead of where we were last year…. We had good numbers and we had a lot of freshmen. We had most of the kids who needed to be there.”

Byers on the Pitt State camp: “For us it’s the first time we’ve ever done something like that. Getting there is a big thing. We’ll get around some of the better teams in the state to see how they work and some of the things they do. They’ll see that it takes more than showing up on Friday nights to play. We’ll have fun, too.”

The Pitt State camp is like other camps at colleges where teams can practice in pads and helmets. The KSHSAA now allows teams to use their own pads, which makes it a little cheaper for schools.

East also plans on doing some 7-on-7 at Andover, which usually has teams like Heights, Kapaun and Newton.

“That’s where they can work on the passing game, and really, it’s about getting the kids together and letting them bond…. Basketball has been playing MAYB since the season is over. So we need to do a little something to keep them together and keep them motivated.

Derby — The Panthers hosted a 7-on-7 tournament and a linemen’s challenge over the weekend. Here’s what coach Brandon Clark had to say:

“The linemen did a series of competition on five-man teams. They were more team-oriented, and they had a blast. We had an obstacle course — I’ve never seen a kid puke and then come up smiling. It was tough and they had fun.”

There was a quarterback throw, where a lineman would throw a 60-pound dummy and a teammate would throw from the spot the dummy landed. Points were earned based on the five throws. There were also bench-press competitions, a five-man sled race and a tug of war. 10 schools were in the linemen challenge, eight in the 7 on 7.

Clark also said that the Panthers intend on having their own weekly 7-on-7 league and go to Rose Hill’s, they’ll go to a 7-on-7 tournament at K-State and are headed to a Tulsa camp Wednesday-Friday.

“It’s the first time we’re going to (the Tulsa team camp). I feel we’re ready. It’s taken me a couple years to get a system, but they’re ready. You see the teams that are consistently good, they always go.”

There’s two-a-days the first and third days, then three-a-days on the second day.

Independent — Coach Corey Lyon said Independent’s team camp will be the week of July 14th. Here’s what he had to say this morning:

“We go a little bit later (in the summer) so we can kind of try to springboard us into practice. So we’ll drill and do what we can do per rules throughout the summer with weights and conditioning. So as we get closer to the end of summer, we’ll run the team camp to help springboard us into fall practice and the kids will have it fresh in their minds.”

As for the 7-on-7, “we encourage our kids to participate in 7-on-7. We really try to push the kids to do that. I can’t do much with it. They may come in and ask me, ‘hey, we heard about this 7-on-7,’ and if I get info through the mail, I can pass it straight on. One of my seniors is in charge of coordinating to get people out. That includes the young kids.”

Lyon also said that Independent will likely go to Andover for 7-on-7 or Newton as well as the 7-on-7 camp at K-State.

Conway Springs — Coach Lelin George returned my call this afternoon, so here’s an update on the Cardinals, which will do their team camp the last week in July.

“That’s when we’ll put in our entire offense, our defensive package for the entire year. We’ll do a lot of our special teams breakdown drills — new things for special teams — to hit the first day of practice with.

We do Summer Pride and we’ll have three days of weight lifting a week until (the start of practice).

(I asked for an explanation of Summer Pride) — Our football program is on a year-round cycle… This is Cycle 1, where we do a lot of heavy lifting — high rep, high weight. There’s a lot of different workouts — plyometrics — speed, agility training. We will do over 20,000 yards of sprints in the month of July.

OK, there you go. Your first taste of football on this blog for the summer. Got somewhere we need to check out? Got a team or an individual on your mind? Write about it here or e-mail me at joanna@varsitykansas.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 p.m. and is filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.