IN SPORTS: LODI GOES DEFENSIVE IN SCRIMMAGE
Lodi High football got its first intra-squad action in Saturday’s round-robin scrimmage at Weston Ranch, and while Flames coach Robert Sperling was cautious about putting too much weight on a scrimmage, he liked what he saw for the most part.
The event featured Lodi, Weston Ranch, Linden and McNair high schools. McNair stepped in after Franklin dropped out.
“I think it went good,” Sperling said. “Y’know, a scrimmage is just a glorified practice against other people, but you get out of a scrimmage what you put into it. For us, we’ve only been in pads for two weeks. You really find out what you need to work on.”
The biggest plus for Sperling was seeing a solid performance out an inexperienced defense against three very different offensive styles. Linden ran a misdirection offense out of a wing-T formation, McNair came in with a spread offense with plenty of deep threats, and Weston Ranch came at the Flames with a standard running offense designed to grind a defense down.
“A run team, a spread pass team and a misdirection team,” Sperling said. “There’s some pretty good athletes at those schools, so it was a good look defensively, and for a defense that really, we only have a couple of guys coming back, the defense has been completely revamped. That was our biggest question mark.”
But with the Flames’ two most experienced players on that side of the ball — Trey Reese and Jake Hayes —
playing the two safety positions, the Lodi defense held its own.
The offensive side showed its potential as well, with a pair of deep touchdown passes, along with the running of top two tailback candidates in Reese and Larry McDowell behind a touch-nosed offensive line.
“We knew going into this season and going into the summer our offensive line is our best unit,” Sperling said. “We expect those guys to perform well, and they did. They got some push.”
Maybe the biggest improvement Lodi saw from last year’s team that went 2-8 was in tackling, something Sperling has stressed as something that needed to be better.
“Our whole summer we worked on tackling — you can’t hit, but we worked on fundamental drills on tackling and aiming points,” Sperling said. “We tackled horribly last year. Football ain’t hard. The team that tackles better, and the team that blocks better is going to win.”