Summer sevens
The Woodlands senior sees plenty of benefit in 7-on-7 action
Incoming senior wide receiver Hunter Moore, above, and the Highlanders make their 16th trip to the 7-on-7 football state tournament this week.
This is Hunter Moore’s third year playing 7-on-7 football, and it never gets old.
The incoming senior wide receiver says the summer diversion has helped him develop his 11-man game, and it’s an thrilling version of the real thing, especially when The Woodlands is playing well.
The Highlanders make their 16th trip to the 7-on7 state tournament this week.
“I look forward to 7-on-7 a lot,” Moore said.
“It’s really a lot different than regular football. There’s no running at all, but … it’s just the competitiveness. We all get really into and it’s very exciting, especially at the qualifying tournaments and the state tournament.”
The Woodlands opens the Division I tournament with pool play Friday at Veterans Park and Athletic Complex in College Station. It’s in Pool O with Forth Worth All Saints, Colleyville and George Ranch, which it kicks off pool play against at 2 p.m. Friday.
The championship game is set for 4 p.m. Saturday.
Moore said the players are looking forward to state, but every tourney is equally important in the ultimate goal of preparing for the fall.
And as a wide receiver, 7-on-7 football is particularly helpful.
“Working on the timing in passing between the quarterback and receiver helps a lot, and we run the routes we would run during the season, so it helps us practice running our routes,” Moore said.
The Highlanders quali-
fied at their first 7-on-7 state qualifier, which they hosted.
The downside of qualifying early is that they played very games in the rest of their SQTs, because qualified teams don’t advance out of pool play, but Moore said he still likes taking care of business early.
“I definitely prefer qualifying early because there’s less to worry about,” he said.
Moore said how they’re playing this summer makes him feel even more at east about how they’ll fare this fall.
He’s especially excited to see what they can do this weekend.
“We’re looking good,” Moore said.
“We have a lot of returners on both sides of the ball, offense and defense, so I’m really excited for this next year.”
When asked to rattle off the key contributors this summer, Moore mentioned many of the same players coach Mark Schmid credited last month, including defenders A.J. Mason, Antoine Winfield, Talon Baskin, and offensive players Chris Stewart, Mason Wuensch, Craig Heiser and Eric Schmid.
Moore said Winfield looks very good going into his senior year.
“He had more than 100 tackles last year so everybody has pretty big expectations for him,” he said.
Heiser, who will be a senior, and Schmid, an incoming junior, have rotated at quarterback.
Moore said he’s comfortable with both players throwing him the ball, though he’s a little more familiar with Heiser, who’s been throwing to him since they were freshmen, but they do have different styles.
“You can definitely tell that Eric Schmid is more of a running quarterback and Craig Heiser’s more of a stay-in-the-pocked kind of guy,” Moore said.
“(But) it’s great that we have two quarterbacks just because of the competition between them.”
Moore sees both players throwing passes into September.
“I’m pretty sure we’re going to go with both of them early on and see who performs better,” he said.
The Woodlands made the championship bracket at last year’s state tourney, then fell 33-31 to Lake Travis in the first round.
It’d like to go a little further in its ninth consecutive appearance.
“We always look forward to 7-on-7,” Moore said. “We all really enjoy it and it’s very exciting, and our goal is always to win it.”