The Siloam Springs football team got a little gut check Friday to wrap up the first week of fall practice.
The Panthers -- practicing in hot, muggy conditions -- had their most grueling practice of the week so far, and Siloam Springs coaches saw what they needed to see. Players were tired, and coaches continued to ask more out of them, seeing if they could fight through the adversity.
"We've actually had a cool summer," Panthers head coach Bryan Ross said after Friday's practice. "Today it's hot and steamy, but we needed that. I thought it was really, really good for us. And we put them in -- as coach (Jonathan) Johnson said -- a stressful situation. It's the first time we've really put our best against our best and hooked it up a little bit, even though we weren't full pads.
"That's how you become a better football team, I believe. I think it did a lot for our conditioning and will go a long way to us becoming a better football team."
There was a mid-practice scrum and a stern talking to the varsity from Ross and defensive coordinator Marc Jones. However, the players responded in the last part of practice.
"Being a little hot and bothered, tempers flare sometimes," Ross said. "We want to be a team that pushes the tempo and goes as hard as we can go so that on Friday nights we don't have to think about being tired or a lack of conditioning. We want to be the best conditioned team we can be, and I think we do that not from running sprints but through playing football.
"When you start getting tired, your brain starts making bad decisions. But that's normal. We expect that. And we want to push through that now so that it doesn't happen on Friday night."
The Panthers wrapped up their Friday practice with situational work on the goal line and with the clock.
On the goal line, the offense was backed up on its 1-yard line and faced with the challenge of having to get itself some breathing room against the Panthers' top defensive players.
On the first of five plays, Colin Dolezal ran up the middle for a first down. The Panthers defense then made three straight stops before a Chris Lampton quarterback keeper around the right side went for a big gain.
"We want to use that as a teachable moment," Ross said. "You've got the offense trying to accomplish one thing. You've got the defense trying to accomplish something else. Try to put them in a situation so that when it happens in a game, they say we've done this. Obviously there are some crazy things that can happen sometimes, but as a coach you want to feel that you've totally prepared your kids for everything. You've got to do it in practice."
The ball was then moved to midfield where the offense was working on "milking" the clock in an end-of-game situation, while the defense was trying to get lined up quickly and strip the ball.
"You want them to understand what the goal is," Ross said. "The goal on offense is to now take care of the football and get time off the clock. Conversely, the defense has got to be trying to get the ball out and stop the clock. Teachable moment on both sides. If you can do that and you're competing hard, I think you've won."
Ross said he was happy with how the first week of practice went for the Panthers. This week the team will move to afternoon practices with coaches having teacher in-service during the mornings and early afternoons.
"We just want to continue to perfect what we do," Ross said. "We've pretty much got everything in that we do. There's a couple of things offensively we haven't done yet, but for the most part our base offense and defense are in. We want to perfect it. We want to get really good at what we do. I don't think there's any one (negative) area that really stands out. In fact, I'm pretty pleased with where we're at for the most part."
Ross said he liked the effort and concentration from his players.
"We talked a lot this summer about really focusing on the little things and what it takes to be a great football team," he said. "And I think the kids are responding to that. I still know they're 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids, they're probably not going to look at things the way we as coaches do sometimes. I think for the most part they have done a good job of focusing and concentrating. It does get old out there sometimes when you keep doing the same thing day after day and it's hot. That's where the mental discipline comes in. We want to be really tough mentally and limit our mistakes. Part of that goes back to conditioning. The better shape you're in, to me the less mistakes you're going to make."
Sports on 08/10/2014