The Siloam Springs football program will start its summer workout program on Tuesday at Panther Fieldhouse.
The first day of fall practice is on July 31, giving the Panthers roughly two months of an offseason program -- with two weeks off in the middle for the Arkansas Activities Association dead period.
"We try to get as much work in as we can," said head coach Bryan Ross, who is entering his ninth season as head coach.
"I always tell the kids, I don't expect you to give up your whole summer, but I do expect you to sacrifice some. Anything worth having in life you're going to have to sacrifice for. The more kids we get up here that are committed to what we're doing and having to sacrifice a little bit of that summer, they'll see the results this fall."
The Panthers should be plenty motivated.
Siloam Springs is coming off a 1-9 season in 2016, with the only win coming on homecoming against Sheridan on a last-second field goal by Luke Gumm. They were 1-6 in the 6A-West Conference and missed the postseason for the second straight season.
Football players must report for a minimum of 18 workouts over the summer, either at 7:30 a.m. or 5:30 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Only a 7:30 a.m. workout is available on Wednesdays and no workouts are held on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays.
A total of 25 workout days are available. For every workout short of 18, a player must run 10 100-yard sprints at the start of fall camp.
Summer workouts will run through the third week of June before a two-week break for the dead period between June 25-July 9.
Summer workouts will resume July 10 and run through July 27.
The Panthers have six team camps scheduled -- four for the varsity and two for junior varsity.
The first team varsity camp will be June 6 at Gentry, followed by a JV team camp at Springdale Har-Ber on June 13.
Another varsity team camp is scheduled at Fayetteville on June 15, followed by a JV team camp at Bentonville on June 20.
The Panthers will host a night team camp at Panther Stadium with Farmington and Gravette at 6 p.m. on July 13.
"(Farmington) coach (Mike) Adams called and wanted to know if we'd like to host a team camp at night, since we're halfway between them and we've got the turf and everything," Ross said. "I said sure. It beats going out there in the morning when it's 100 (degrees)."
The final team camp will be July 20 at Rogers Heritage.
Siloam Springs will also host three 7-on-7 sessions at 6 p.m. on Mondays July 10, July 17 and July 24.
The Panthers' annual Pee-Wee Camp will be July 24-26.
"We've looked at that (Pee-Wee Camp) and I don't know when the best time is," Ross said. "You run into all sorts of things in the summer. This time I felt like it kind of fit better for us toward the end of summer. Hopefully we'll have a good crew come out."
Spring game reflection
The Panthers held their spring game to wrap up spring practice on May 19.
One bright spot in the game was the play of sophomore quarterback Taylor Pool, who led the White team to a 41-7 romp of the Maroon.
"I was really pleased with the way Taylor Pool played," Ross said. "Here's a kid that missed all of last year with an injury and then missed quite a bit of spring with baseball. He didn't get nearly the amount of work in that you would like this past year. You know he does some good things, liked what I saw there."
Ross said the players that are expected to be key contributors played well for the Panthers in the spring game.
"It's hard sometimes when you split them up to get a hard view of what you might be as a total team," Ross said. "We know that we're thin up front in the number of linemen that we have. We've got to do a good job of keeping people rested. Some of them are probably going to have to play a little bit both ways. You hate to do that but you've got to do what you've got to do.
"Corbin Collins, he's a dang good football player, so he's going to have to be ready to play on both sides. Matt Avery and people like that, we'll try to get them primarily to one side of the ball and then hopefully on the other side be able to rotate them in."
Sports on 05/28/2017