Gearing up
Local high school teams kick off football practice
Football season — at least, the official start of practice — is here.
Several local teams — including Cibola, Kofa and Yuma Catholic — kicked things off Monday with their first official practice of the season. Games for those schools begin in three-and-a-half weeks.
“It’s an exciting time,” Cibola coach Lucky Arvizo said. “It tells everyone that the time is getting close for football season.”
Yuma Catholic’s Rhett Stallworth, back in his second go-around as the Shamrocks’ head coach, was also excited to be back out on the field, though he was less enthused about how practice went.
“I’ve got a couple of guys that didn’t come prepared; there’s a lot of hard work before us, and we should have had a better showing today,” Stallworth said.
The Shamrocks spent the first hour-plus of their scheduled two-hour practice on football, before transitioning to conditioning. The team ran 14 laps
around the practice field — sprinting the short ends of the field, jogging the long ends — with the number 14, according to Stallworth, representing the amount of games the Shamrocks plan on playing this year. That would mean, of course, reaching the 3A state championship.
Though Monday was the first official day of practice, most teams have been taking part in various forms of football activities for several weeks — if not nearly the entire summer.
Yuma Catholic, for one, spent last week up at Snowflake for the Championship Mountain Football Camp. The Shamrocks arrived Monday and departed Saturday, and got in 14 unofficial practices — two Monday, and three each of the ensuing four days.
“Last week was great because what happens is we take away all the distractions,” said Stallworth, whose team opens the season Aug. 18 (a Saturday) at home against San Manuel. “You get them out of town, you take away their cellphones, you take away their computers, they don’t have parents, girlfriends, grandparents or anything like that. We force them to deal with each other.”
Cibola, which opens its season Aug. 17 at Imperial (Calif.), held its own version of a preseason camp with its varsity players last week at Cibola. It basically served as a continuation of what the Raiders’ did most of the summer, with their standard week consisting of Monday-Thursday lifting followed by some work on the field.
The Raiders also took part in two passing league tournaments at San Diego State in June.
“They’ve been working pretty hard this summer,” Arvizo said. “They’re ready to get the pads on, get some realistic football contact.”
Arizona Interscholastic Association rules state that shoulder pads can come out after three days of official practice — helmets are allowed from the beginning, though Cibola went without Monday — and full pads after six days.
Kofa was the first team to officially open practice Monday, as the Kings — under first-year head coach David Diehl — went with a 7 a.m. start (Cibola and YC went in the evening).
“It kind of just gets them in the mode of not getting in a set (routine), just a little bit of a change-up,” Diehl said, adding that the Kings would transition to evening practices later this week.
Despite the early start, Diehl said the team’s energy was good.
“The energy has been really good this whole summer,” said Diehl, whose team opens its season Aug. 17 at Trevor G. Browne. “We’ve had a really strong group of about 25 guys — unbelievable leadership, I’ve enjoyed being around them. This has been the best summer for workouts and leadership since I’ve been around the program (five years).”
Like the aforementioned three teams, Gila Ridge and Antelope also have “Week Zero” games this year — though Antelope won’t officially start practice until next week. Yuma High, which doesn’t play until Aug. 24 against Calexico (Calif.), begins practice Thursday.