The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Raiders, Panthers battle in teams’ first scrimmage
Both Columbia and Elyria Catholic have had to do a bit of retooling after coming off playoff seasons last year. In the teams’ first scrimmage Aug. 16, it was about gauging the players’ attitudes more than anything, and how they would react to being inevitably knocked down by a formidable opponent.
There is still plenty of room to grow with two weeks until the season opener, especially for Columbia, which has only three seniors in its starting lineup including two starters from last season. But there was much to be taken from the teams’ first real tests.
“I wanted to see us fight, just battle,” Columbia coach Jason Ward said. “I wanted to see this group battle and play with some energy and some enthusiasm, and in first scrimmages you’re always gonna have that, but I wanted to see a lot of that today.
“I wanted to see what kind of character we had. We came out here with 25 healthy bodies, we’ve got like 10 guys hurt right now, and we challenged them. We said, ‘If you’re dressing for this scrimmage, we need you to finish this scrimmage,’ and they did a good job of that so I was excited.”
Elyria Catholic is in better shape in terms of experience with five returning starters on offense and four on defense.
While the Panthers feature nine seniors on each side of the ball, Coach Brian Fox was still unsure of how his team would handle the challenge of putting its system to the test for the first time against an opponent.
When asked what he wanted to see from his players in their first scrimmage, he simply said: “Toughness.”
“In a fight you get punched in the mouth and how you handle it is what makes you a team,” Fox said.
“These kids came out and they played physical, and we were bickering — I swear it took about 30 plays just to calm everybody down and refocus. So right now, we haven’t really been challenged that much because we’ve been low on numbers in certain areas. We kind of lost our minds a little bit and we need to improve on what I knew we needed to improve on which is leadership and mental toughness.”
But both teams finished the day in better shape than when they started, and for a pair of teams with as much success as they had last season to start training camp with plenty of question marks, things seem to be tracking well as Week 1 approaches.
Columbia hosts Independence on Aug. 30 and Elyria Catholic hosts Perkins.
“I’m excited about getting better quickly,” Ward said. “I think this is a group that can get better quickly so I’m hoping for that.”