Two schools of thought
By TED DUNNAM. Story & photo courtesy of www.HCNOnline.com.
August 18, 2009
Playing it safe isn’t the motto of the Dawson Eagle football team – even during two-a-day practices.
“We’re going at it pretty hard,” head coach Eric Wells said. “We’re really not holding back very much.
“We’re not being dumb about it, but we’re making every day and every practice a battle.”
Maybe that’s because Wells knows what’s in store for the Eagles’ immediate future – a gauntlet of opponents who take no quarter.
“Friday was our first day in pads and we got a lot accomplished,” Wells said. “It was good getting them back out there.
“The kids retained a lot from this spring. We’ve been coaching these same kids for three years, and it’s good to see how far they’ve progressed.”
And physically matured, also.
“We’ve been talking about how much more of a physical football team we can be,” the second-year Eagle head coach said. “We want to be a very, very physical team, one that flies to the football on defense.
“We want to have that same mentality on offense, too. We’ll be a finesse team on offense in a lot of situations, but we want to be able to play smash-mouth football, even when we’re pass-blocking.”
The Eagles posted a 4-4 record in their inaugural varsity season, losing three of those games by just five points.
Wells knows that any improvement Dawson makes from last year could be the determining factor in a game’s outcome for the Eagles this season.
“We’re doing everything at game speed – nothing is tentative,” he said. “We actually have some depth this year so we’re trying to get everybody a lot of reps.
“Once we have the pads on a few more days, we feel like we’ll be able to get a good evaluation of our kids.”
The Eagles will get a taste of someone other than themselves when they scrimmage Atascocita from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. this Saturday at The Rig.
“Atascocita will be a really good test,” Wells said. “They’ve got a lot of returning starters and do a great job defensively.
“On offense, they run the spread and they do a lot of things out of the shotgun. They’ll definitely give us a look something similar to what we’ll see against Friendswood, La Marque, Angleton and Texas City.”