We Showed Improvement Tonight!!!

Well, I feel alot better after 7 on 7 at Woodruff tonight. Our offensive execution was much better and we were much more aggressive on defense. If we were keeping score we would have won all three games. That should be good for the kid's confidence as well. W e still have alot of work to do and we cannot put a whole lot of credence in the fact that success in 7 on 7's will convert into success in the fall. I was real pleased with both QB's tonight. Also, we had some other kids come down and do pretty well. It is 60 days until our first game. So, believe it or not, the summer is half over. We'll see what next week brings.

We've got some work to do!!!

Well, after yesterday I realize that we do have some definite work to do. We had flashes of good solid play, but they were seperated by breakdowns in responsibility and technique. In the kid's defense, we have not spent alot of time on our defensive coverage technique so that will explain some of the breakdowns. The big time for this instruction will come during our team camp in the end of July. So, I do feel confident that we will definitely see some improvement over the course of the summer. I did think for the most part offensively we were fine. We had far too many dropped balls, but to be honest I expected some poor throws and bad reads, and for the most part that was at a minimum. We have a pretty even competition for the QB position between a Junior and Sophomore. Right now, I feel like the Junior is a little ahead because of experience, but the Sophomore has a little more natural talent and has a true passion to learn. It will be fun to see how it all "shakes" out. I do still feel confident that we will be a very competitive team.

Week 3 in the Books!!!

Wow!!! It sure seems like every summer just goes faster every year. It is certainly hard to believe that we have been at this for 3 weeks already. Things have been going very well. I am certainly starting to have a good feeling about this team. This group seems to be very "hungry". Last year's group was very confident in their abilities, so they had a completely different kind of optimism. This year there are not the expectations that there were for last year's group, but I think that the kids want to show people differently. Tomorrow we go to U of I for 7 on 7. I always have mixed feelings about 7 on 7 competitions. I really want to emphasize instruction and learning our plays and defensive sets. It is only natural for competitive juices to flow and it sometimes interferes with the coaching that I want to take place, but we'll give it a go tomorrow and see how it goes. I'll post later this weekend on how the day went.

7 on 7 goes well

On Monday we had our first 7 on 7 and according to our assistant coaches things went well. I had an administrator's retreat in Chicago. This was one of the first indicators that I am not going to need to be around. Things came off without a hitch and I was not here! I really did not fret much while it was going on, so that is an indicator to me that I will not miss things much either. We do have about 10 days to get ready for a competitive 7 on 7 at U of I on the 21st of June. I do feel very good about the way things have gone over the first two weeks and I am excited for things to come.

Day 1 in the Books

Things went well. Large turn-out, there usually always is the first day. Generally the kids worked pretty well. The first day is always a challenge to get the freshman up to speed. The upperclassmen jump right in with no problems. We have the usual amount of kids gone on vacation and the usual amount of no-shows for the first day, but I anticipate having close to 100 back out this season.
Just a sidebar: Thank god for my wife!!! Today was a pretty typical summer day in our house. Daughter had gymnastics and cake decorating class, son had basketball camp and a baseball game, with pictures beforehand, and on top of that my wife watched 2 small kids who belong to some friends of ours from church, who needed to go to the hospital for the kid's grandmother's surgery. People always wonder how we can do things with coaching all day. That is because the wives run the whole show and are invaluable to us not only spiritually, but keeps us in line on top of it. I have a true special friend and a true "head coach" of our family.