Coaches pleased with teams’ summer progress
FOUNTAIN LAKE — Three Garland County teams got to test their mettle Monday in unusual conditions for July as Fountain Lake hosted Jessieville and Cutter Morning Star for a 7-on-7 camp at Allen Tillery Field.
“We really enjoyed yesterday,” firstyear Fountain Lake head coach Brandon Barbaree said. “Of course, we dropped some balls, but I think the kids enjoyed it more. They played a little looser. We managed to fight through the elements and have a good day.”
Jessieville head coach T.J. Burk agreed that the rain hindered his receivers somewhat.
“It was OK,” he said. “We struggled some with the ball being wet. Later on, we did a better job of catching it.”
While 7-on-7 does not really feature Fountain Lake’s new offensive scheme, Barbaree said that what his team is doing during the pass-intensive camps does fit into the overall double slot/ double wing offense his team is moving to this season.
“It [7-on-7] doesn’t really fit into what we do,” he said. “It’s really for our defensive players. Once you add in the linemen, it’s different. We’re able to compete. I hear the other teams saying that they want to beat us, and our guys want the same thing.
“We do a lot of our [7-on-7] stuff in the shotgun. It fits in our system. It’s not our primary stuff, but it’s stuff we work on.”
CMS head coach T.C. Shamel said that his team is doing well at this point in the summer, having been to several camps this summer.
“We went out to Centerpoint,” he said. “We were going to play in the Perryville tournament [in June], but it got rained out. So we had an impromptu thing with us, Magnet Cove, Poyen, Fordyce and England. We went 4-1; Fordyce beat us.”
Shamel is glad to have many of his players from last year’s squad back in action this season.
“We had the youngest team I’ve ever coached last year,” he said. “We had two seniors. Obviously, we took a lot of lumps, but we’ve got a lot of those kids back.
“Our quarterback, Sam Moore, is getting more confident as we go along. He’s not exactly where he needs to be, but he’s getting better. They’re all getting better.”
Burk said that he has approximately 30 players on his roster at this point, but “that’s not an exact count.”
“We have some who haven’t been to practices, and we have a few slots that will fill up when school starts. We only lost four seniors from last years’s team, but we’re still pretty young. The good thing about that is that those young kids have a lot of experience because they had to play a lot last year.”
Shamel is again struggling with numbers, but he has over 20 athletes that he is working with.
“We’re fighting a numbers battle,” he said. “We’re down to about 22-23 now. I like the nucleus we have now, but it’s just July 16.
“We’ve always got about 20-23. When we made the playoffs in 2013, we had 19. If you’ve got a good bunch, it’s a lot better going. We’ve got a good junior
class. If we can get some experience, I hope it’s something that we can build off of.”
Barbaree said that while he has decent numbers, installing a new system creates some issues.
“I know that we’ve got a lot of room to grow,” he said. “We’ve had some growing pains, … but we’re going to keep growing all year. Are we ready for Week 1? No, but we’ve still got 40 days. We’ve got a lot of room to grow.”
Burk said that he is pleased with his returning players with sophomore quarterback Carson Hair returning to the helm.
“He’s done good,” he said. “During 7-on-7, he’s made some great reads. He put the ball in the right spots [Monday]. We dropped the ball a bit with the wet, but he’s a young guy who has had a lot of meaningful snaps.”
Fountain Lake will host the two teams again on Monday, marking Jessieville’s final summer competition day while Cutter Morning Star will travel to Centerpoint on Tuesday.