Panthers happy to be back
The Siloam Springs football team wrapped up its first week of summer workouts Thursday morning with a series of sprints on the turf at Panther Stadium.
The hour-long workouts on Monday through Thursday of last week were the first the Panthers have had as a team since March 16, when the Arkansas Activities Association dead period began because of the covid-19 pandemic.
Senior leaders Jared Clark and Camden Collins said everyone was excited to get back to working out, even under precaution guidelines, which included social distances, wearing masks and no contact.
“It’s awesome you know?” said Clark, the Panthers’ projected left tackle. “We had a pretty long break. When you’re all together, it definitely multiplies the intensity, multiplies everything that you guys can do together. And it’s just awesome to get together with your bros and be able to work out and push each other and compete in the weight room. It’s just awesome.
“We’re all getting good work. The Zoom (meetings), they were beneficial, but they were nothing like being together and being with the coaches. Coaches are definitely pushing us. We’re definitely getting whipped back into shape.”
Said Collins, an all-state linebacker, “I just like getting back and working out with everything you know? Being able to work out with my buddies.
“When I’m working at home, no one is pushing me. I don’t get much done. When you come over here you’ve got people pushing you. We’ve just got to get better as a team and work on brotherhood and get back into shape and work as a team.”
The Panthers wound up having hour-long workouts each day this past week. The AAA instructed teams to slowly increase the length of workouts through an acclimatization period, but
Siloam Springs opted to keep everything at one hour.
“We took our own approach to the acclimatization period,” said Siloam Springs coach Brandon Craig. “We only did an hour workouts this week, just to give everybody a chance to get back in the groove. Next week we’ll start the hour-and-a-half workouts. We’ll do one week of hourand-a-half workouts and then the third week we’ll jump into our two-hour full workouts.”
Craig said it’s been a good week of workouts for the Panthers, who went 5-7 in 2019 and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Class 6A playoffs.
“It’s been great mentally for the players to get back involved,” Craig said. “You can just see an attitude change from being at home on Zoom to being here in person. There’s a lot of steps of course to ensure we’re doing things the right way. I’m really proud of our coaching staff for monitoring and making sure we’re doing things the right way.”
Craig has been pleased with attendance the first week, though there are some kids who haven’t shown back up yet, he said.
“We’ve still got a few kids missing,” he said. “We’ve communicated through Zoom. We’ve communicated through Hudl. We’re communicating through Remind and also got some Facebook posts out there. We’re doing everything we can to make sure they know we’re up here. Hopefully they’ll continue to show up. We’ve had really good numbers so far and just want to keep that going.”