CANEY BAY — Brantley County head coach David Shores is excited for Monday’s first official practice in pads.
The Herons’ second-year head coach said his squad will begin hitting as soon as they leave the field house.
“We’re going ‘Oklahoma’ day one,” said Shores. “We’re trying to knock people’s face off. I want to see physicality. You want to stay healthy and not do anything stupid, but, you basically pick up where you left off in the spring.”
The Oklahoma drill is a competitive, one-on-one drill with a blocker and a ball carrier facing off against a defender.
BCHS is coming in off a five-day acclimation period last week.
“It’s been a good week,” Shores said Wednesday of practice No. 22. “I think our attention has been there. Attendance this week has been better than it has all summer. So it’s been good so far.
“Our kids are pretty much acclimated already. We go from 8 (a.m.) to 12 (noon) every day with the first two hours outside. We come in and lift and watch film and swap groups and lift and watch film. We’ll feed them and send them home at 12.”
Brantley County will have nine practices in pads before suiting up Friday, August 8 to scrimmage Frederica Academy on the St. Simons Island campus.
Many of the practices, expecially when school starts, will begin at 6:30 a.m. and finish at 7:30 a.m.
“We were missing a lot of practice time early last year because of the heat and afternoon lightning,” Shores said. “I talked with the administration about the switch and it was approved. Now, we get all of our competition stuff in our contact phases.
“We’ll do film study in the afternoon or do our walk through stuff, and any teaching with corrections. We can also do our kicking game stuff. Any non-contact stuff we will do for about an hour. This also helps the players get their legs back under them.”
Shores will also take advantage of having fourth block weight training moved to first block ending at 9:30 a.m. That will give him three hours with players.
The scrimmage against the Knights is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. The varsity squads will scrimmage for three quarters followed by a quarter of action between the jayvee teams.
“We’ll (coaches) rotate a lot of players in to get them on film,” said Shores.
Brantley County kicks the season off for keeps Friday, August 15 when Charlton County visits.
