Week 4...The final week!

It's finally the final week of spring football leading up to the spring game. This was the easiest physical practices out of all of them but the hardest mental ones. We only had two practices this week because they wanted us to be healthy for the spring game on Saturday. So, practice one was just helmets and shoulder pads. What we did was install one last play and go over it about a thousand times, then after that we did some thud-tempo offense and defense team so we could see if the play was working on some defenses, and that's what we did all practice. The last practice of the spring season was the lightest of them all we didn't hit at all. All we did was walkthrough and make sure everyone understands what they are doing. Tomorrow we will be picking up our uniforms for the spring game, and then Saturday it’s the day we've all been waiting for, the spring game! I'm excited to see what’s in store for our team and see how much we have learned in the past four weeks!

Week 3...Repition.

This week of practices were painstaking to say the least. All of our bodies are sore from practicing for the last two weeks, we hit every play, we work out 3 times a week, and we get up at 5 in the morning for practice, so we're extremely tired, but that doesn't stop us from giving our best. Monday's practice was the most annoying one to be a part of because of our situation that happened at last weeks practice. It started out as a normal practice, we go through our warm-up, then as we're jogging out on the field our coach stops us right before the game field and makes everyone huddle up. He says "since all of you want to be lazy and not take off our cleats before we get in our NEW locker room, we're going to practice how to do that right now". So that's exactly what we did, We had to jog roughly 250 yards back to the locker room, take off our cleats, go into the locker room, touch our locker, go back outside put on our cleats, and jog all the way back out to the huddle spot. He made us do that four times before he let us begin practice. Let just say that all of us definitely take off our cleats before we go into the locker room now. The next two practices were like the rest of them, hit on every play, line up and do it again. I could tell that we we're making strides as a program for our football knowledge.

Week 2... There's a first for everything.

Week 2 was still a transition week, but also a week where the coaches really start expecting you to catch on to what they've been coaching you for the last week. Before Monday's practice coach makes us huddle up and he says this week is the week where you show us what you've got and why you deserve to have a starting spot on this team. So Monday's practice was nothing short of a hard competitive head knocking practice. Play after play they guy across from you, your teammate but also your enemy because he's trying to make you not do your job and you're trying to make him not do his job is going one hundred percent every play, and that could be rough if he's better than you. Wednesdays practice was my first time ever practicing in the snow, needless to say it was freezing. Still the coaches expected nothing less of us that day. Just because of a little snow doesn't mean that we still can’t give it our all at practice. So practice on Wednesday was pretty interesting. By the time Friday hit, all the snow was melted leaving the ground wet and muddy, which means it was going to be a dirty practice. Because of it being so muddy the coaches let us do a "thud tempo" practice which means that no one gets tackled and we go about seventy percent. After practice I knew that we messed up pretty bad when I went in the locker room and the whole ground was full of mud, and I knew right away that we were going to get punished.

Week one...Interesting

This week’s practices were interesting in a way, but also very fun because it was our first week with pads. The first day of pads is always a little slower than usual, just because of the fact is that you want to always start out light on hitting until everyone’s pads are broken in and so they don’t hurt themselves by using poor form. So the first practice was a little slow, a lot more individual work than team scrimmaging. Wednesdays practice was the install practice, so we put in new plays, run them on air till we get them right, then we run them in the team period. So that went pretty well. Finally it was Friday practice and we were all excited because it was our first full-go day, which means that the practice is live, you get to hit as hard as you want, and you get to tackle. Friday’s practice was a great way to finish on the week because we were competing finally!

 

Starting of a New Season

This year was my first year ever playing spring football for any sports program that I've been a part of. it definitely had its ups and downs throughout these fifteen practices, from practicing in the snow, in bone chilling negative degree mornings, and so windy that you can’t even hear what plays are being called. This year has been a ride and I loved every second of it. In these next few blogs I will update you on how our spring practices have went week by week and give you updates on hour our team is growing as a whole and what we need to work on.