Hopes are high in Bulldog country as the defending area champions returned 72 players in the program to the field Friday night with the annual “Black and White scrimmage.”
The frozen tundra is far far away from the Bulldog Stadium verdure. Bulldogs Head Coach Zack Hudson says that the 80-year-old facilty’s turf is eight weeds away from perfection. Hudson wants the same from his team in 2015.
“Our goal is to beat Sonora. And that’s the semi-finals.” said Hudson. “My goal has always been to play at Thanksgiving and that’s still the goal, but there is only way to get to Sonora and that’s the semifinals and we have to find a way to get there. How ever we have to get there.”
Howe, who comes into the 2015 season ranked 11 in 3A-Division II, will no longer be able to fly under the radar. On Monday, 69 boys reported to two-a-day workouts, but that number grew to 72 by the end of the week. With Friday being the first day of pads, they were thrown into hitting quickly with the annual scrimmage coming on the same day. Hudson liked some of the things that he saw.
“I saw some kids that played a lot of JV last year that played a lot tonight.” said Hudson. “They wanted to step up and they did. And then, of course, there are some of the players that are going to have to get a lot better.” Hudson said that they did a lot of alternating from kids that were primarily offensive players that took a lot of reps on defense.
“Some of these kids really stepped up, and there was about four of five of them, especially in the secondary that we weren’t too sure about that stepped up and played, so that will give us some depth there that we didn’t know about.
Hudson, beinga stickler for detail, said that they will have to study the video to see how their performances were. Now in his third year, he says that things are run a lot smoother because the little things such as showing up on time being prepared have been handled. The little things that he deals with now are the fine-tuning of a defensive system which is in its third year and an offense which in its second year with the new slot-T look brought by Offensive Coordinator Dale West a year ago.
“You can tell we’ve played for a while.” said Hudson. “You can tell our kids get it and the only reason they do is because they have more experience. It’s nice to see a lot of experience out on the field finally.”
West, who taught the slot-T formation to the offense last season says that this year is much easier. “Last year, we were teaching a lot. This year, we’re refreshing.” said West. “We’re miles ahead of last year. It’s been a fun five days.” West, who is known to love to run the football and only called 23 pass plays in 13 games, expressed the need to complete more of those few opportunities.
“We only completed six of them last year and we’ve got to raise that percentage up.” said West. “We threw five or six times today. We need to see if we can really throw and catch it.”
West said that he would not name names, but was impressed with a lot of the younger athletes on the field in the scrimmage.
Normally, when you graduate your school’s alltime leading rusher, there is not this much hype surrounding a team, however, Hudson and West feel that this is a plug-and-play system. In a summer interview, West talked as if Stratton Carroll, who will return to action after tearing his ACL last Halloween vs. Whitewright, should be the home run hitter for the ‘Dogs. Tyler Grisham and both of the Matthews brothers should see action in the backfield along with sophomore Andrew Griffin.
This year’s community pep-rally will be a little different from the last several years and more similar to the first ever community pep-rally held in 2011. It will start a little later with a 7:30 “kick-off” time on Friday night, August 21. As in 2011, a “passing of the torch” ceremony will take place to represent the entirety of the football program from 1935- 2015 with former players or former players’ family representing each decade.
