Junction City begins spring practice
Although spring may have arrived, the cooler weather has been more suited for fall, which is rather fitting with Junction City officially starting spring practice.
The Dragons, who reached the 2A state semifinals in December, had their first workout on Thursday.
“Had a good workout,” said Junction City coach Brad Smith. “We worked offense and defense with preference on offense. The running backs and quarterbacks really picked up new stuff well. Our veteran linemen also looked good. We had a good first day. We have some new kids out at receiver and they can catch the football. We just have to get them to understand the routes. A good start to hopefully a great spring.”
While most schools usually wait until the end of the school year to conduct spring practice, Smith wanted to get an earlier start.
“We’ve never started in April,” Smith said. “It’s always been right as school was getting out. We just decided this year that we’re going to go and get it underway early.
We want to look and see what we’ve got, kind of work out and figure some things out because at the end of the year, you’ve got some kids that are struggling or having to make up classwork. We want to get this out of the way so if we have to pull a kid out of the weight room to meet some scholastic requirements, we can.”
The Dragons won’t completely be at full strength with some team members currently playing baseball, but Smith said that will give him and the coaching staff time to evaluate younger players.
“The guys we’re going to miss over there, we’re missing two guys that are big parts of it, Bryan Estrada and Slade Wilson, and we’ve got a couple of younger kids over there, but we feel it’s best for us with the changes that we’re making,” Smith said. “We’ve got the majority of our skill kids over here, so we’re going to go with that and see what we can get done. We’ve got a couple of young skill kids that we’re really high on and we’re going to get them as much work as possible.”
Starting next week, the
Dragons will practice three times a week during April.
“We’re going three days a week except for this week,” Smith said. “I think this worked out perfect the way we’re getting out for the Easter break. We got all of the nerves out and then come back Monday, Wednesday and Thursday next week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday the week after that, then Monday and Wednesday and we just haven’t decided yet what kind of practice that’s going to be.”
Smith said the Dragons could have a spring scrimmage, but nothing has been finalized on that front.
“That’s what is kind of in the works,” Smith said. “We’ve got to make sure that we don’t want to put out there that we’re going to do it and then not be healthy enough to do it. I think it would be a pretty fun thing, but we’re going to keep it under the hat until we get a clear OK from everybody.”
Smith said that he had 24 players out for Thursday’s practice, and that some changes were being made on both offense and defense.
“We’ve got some young ones that need experience,” Smith said. “We’re changing some things that we do on both sides of the football. We’re going to use this opportunity to get a good teach on and try to get the ship back in the right direction.”
After falling to Des Arc in the semifinals, the Dragons began their offseason workouts the Monday after the game.
“We did that,” Smith said. “We tested on Monday and Tuesday and the first week was the week after the semis. We really hammered our legs and got them where we thought they needed to be. Now we’re trying to change focus and have got them more on arms for the last five weeks.”
When asked which position group he was looking forward to seeing during practices, Smith said it would be linemen.
“We lost just tons of linemen,” Smith said. “We lost the H-back, the tight end, the right tackle, the right guard, and we lost another one of those guys on the other side. We’ve got our work cut out for us trying to replace those guys. We graduated a whole bunch of those guys, and a lot of them were two-, three-year starters. We’ll be cutting teeth with them for awhile.”