The Crook County High School football team played its annual Blue & Gold scrimmage Saturday and head coach Pard Smith was pleased with what he say.
“I think we did a good job getting lined up correctly, especially on defense and knowing our assignment,” he said. “We had to play a few guys out of position tonight in order to get a scrimmage in, but they know what to do. Now, it's a matter of polishing and being able to execute that assignment.”
Smith added that after just five days of practice the team still has a lot of work to do to get to where they want to be. Still, he believes the team is light years ahead of where they were when he took over as head coach four years ago.
“I think we are in a great spot,” he said. “I think back to my first year when we changed some things up on offense and we couldn't even run a scrimmage. We had to run kind of a modified practice and we did some seven on seven, so in four years how far we've come, I'm super proud of it. We are definitely not where we need to be, but a great start to the season.”
So far the Cowboys have 65 players on the roster. However, several players were injured in practice earlier in the week. In addition several players were out of town and missed the scrimmage.
In spite of the missing players Smith was pleased with the depth he saw, noting that there isn't a big drop off when they rotate different players into the lineup.
After falling in the first round of the state playoffs each of the last two years the Crook County coaching staff did a lot of self reflection in the off season and Smith made several changes.
“For the last two years we have made it to the playoffs and have been leading at halftime and then end up losing that game,” he said. “So we have done some self scouting, self reflection and I feel like there is more that I can do to help develop team camaraderie and to held facilitate that leadership, so we have really been attacking that just as much as we have the Xs and Os.”
Along with several other teams from Crook County Smith took a group of team leaders to leadership clinic at Summit High School a week ago. Although the team had already implemented several changes in their leadership Smith noted that the clinic gave the team some good information and will help improve the leadership on the team.
“That's something as a coach and as a head coach that we are trying to get better at. It's a way to get an advantage,” he said. “For us the energy has always been something that's been tough. The highs and lows of football, when things are going good we have energy, but trying to figure out how to overcome that adversity we have struggled. Through leadership and then those leaders building future leaders and then just bonding together we have found that energy. We are not 100 percent yet, but it's better.”
The Cowboys showed the ability to break some big plays during Saturday's scrimmage, but they also made some mistakes that killed drives.
“We can't turn over the ball,” Smith said. “We can't have bad snaps, or throw picks over the middle or have the fumbles that get us there. We can't have that kind of stuff. We had a few penalties. It wasn't terrible, but the penalties that we had were kind of silly. You know, lining up in the neutral zone, and encroachment and a few silly penalties. It's our goal to play the game mistake free and take the game out of the referees hands and we didn't do that tonight.”
Crook County plays Cascade, Madras and Redmond Friday, Aug. 30 at a jamboree in Madras. Smith views that as a good opportunity to see how the Cowboys stack up against a number of different styles of play, as well as a last chance to evaluate players before settling on a starting lineup.
Following Friday's jamboree Crook County will open the regular season on Friday, Sept. 6 when they go on the road to take on Estacada in a 7 p.m. game.
Most Popular
Comments / 0