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Two sides of a coin at Bolingbrook
Updated: July 19, 2011 12:15PM
Spread across the campus of Bolingbrook High School on Saturday were 46 different teams.
Chicago city teams like Morgan Park, Brooks Prep and Bogan were there. There was visitor C.R. Washington all the way from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which drove some four hours to participate in the massive 7-on-7 competition, complete with Nike sponsorship and Facebook page directing you to the athletic supplier’s website.
Mix in all the familiar west suburbam teams plus Naperville North and Waubonsie Valley and you have a massive operation.
One question that could be posed is when is too much, too much?
“We try to make sure the kids don’t get worn out and still like playing football,” second year Huskies coach Sean Drendel said.
In an effort to keep kids fresh but allow coaches to coach, the IHSA allows 25 practices over the course of the summer, followed by a two-week “hands off” period before practices officially start on Aug. 10.
The Huskies have a star-less team this year and are working to fill holes and find roles, yet Drendel says he’s used 14 of his 25 days
“We’re grading out, but we use them more as a teaching session, trying to learn our system,” Drendel said. “It’s not so much about actual — I don’t want to say productivity because we’re looking for people to make plays — but it’s not so much if we’re winning or losing. We’re trying to get everyone reps and see what we’ve got.”
Teams like Waubonsie, which has plenty of skill players returning and potential stars like wide receiver Demetrius Gray, take a slightly different approach — especially with a seasoned coach.
“We told them today it’s show me what you know,” Warriors coach Paul Murphy said about Saturday’s events. “We’re going to decide what our depth chart is for August for the skill guys and it’s ‘Do you know your routes, do you know your spacing, do you know how to get open?’ Today, the No. 1’s are getting all the reps and it’s show me what you can do. … We’ve been at it for three weeks (of camp). “We should have been the sharpest today because we just came off four days of camp.”
Up until that point, Murphy used the smaller 7-on-7’s as learning experiences. Last week, the Warriors participated in a 16-team rotating, padless scrimmage at Downers South, where the Huskies also were.
Murphy has one more 7-on-7 planned against Metea Valley next week — the fifth of the summer — and plans to use most of that to get reps for the non-starters. After that, the players will weight lift and stay in shape on their own until Aug. 10 when things really heat up in anticipation of the first games Aug. 26.
The coach explained why he likes the scheduled format.
“I like them because it gives you reps against other people,” Murphy said. “You’re not getting different looks when you go against your own defense. You’re seeing what they do. If your defense isn’t giving all kinds of different coverages … our quarterbacks and receivers find it valuable. We’ve played two games so far and we’ve seen two different style of coverages with the same defense. It’s a cover-2 shell but they’re not playing it the same.”
Murphy went on to explain what happened when they rotated three receivers to one side and how the defense adjusted, plus how his receivers got jammed at the line of scrimmage, which they hadn’t seen.
The clear benefit to a player is the experience gained, perhaps leading to a better handling of a similar situation during a game. But there are several outliers to the “success” attained during the summer, and playing the starters may or may not matter come Aug. 10 when coaches will find the true mettle of their team when the hitting begins.
“We mix and match,” Drendel said about his philosophy this summer. “It’s not first group all the time. We’re not trying to win the 7-on-7 game. Our approach is football is meant to have blocking and tackling involved and we’ll grade ourselves out when we start doing that.”
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