Menu
Tigers scrimmage in advance of opener
Fort Scott High head coach Bob Campbell wanted to have his varsity work on things without showing off too much at the annual Red & White Football Scrimmage at Frary Field Friday night.
Coffeyville — the Tigers’ season-opening opponent Aug. 31 —was scouting the scrimmage since the Golden Tornado held their scrimmage on Thursday. Likewise, Fort Scott scouted Coffeyville’s scrimmage.
“We were pretty basic tonight,” Campbell said. “We’ll exchange this film with Coffeyville. Coach (Darin) Wegner and his staff do a really fine job so we were pretty vanilla tonight. But we wanted to work on things that we want to get good at: running the ball inside, run some option, throwing the ball in the three-step (drop). And I thought, overall, we did a pretty nice job of that.”
Though new practice regulations have cut down on the number of practices teams can have before the season opens, the Tigers didn’t look like they were behind schedule. It looked like most scrimmages with players eager to get out and hit somebody.
“I thought the effort was outstanding by a lot of our kids,” Campbell said. “All of our groups played hard and gave good effort. So that was exciting. Also, we were able to get out of it without any significant injuries, which is always important.
“I felt the execution by both sides was good. Defense flew around and made good plays. I thought the offense executed pretty well.”
The freshmen — with a few sophomores worked in as there were only 18 available — worked out for about 35 minutes. During that workout, frosh quarterback Cade Gulager threw a 68-yard touchdown pass to Parker Allen, who broke a couple of tackles, Jacob Stinnett had a 61-yard touchdown run and an interception and Allen also had an interception.
The No. 1 varsity offense, which will be helmed by senior quarterback Matt Campbell this season, scored on its three possessions. Alec Michaud broke a 12-yard scoring run. Campbell hit Jonathan Daniels from 80 yards out. And Dalton Colvin scored on a 4-yard run.
During a junior-varsity-on-JV session, Jamar Franks scored on a 14-yard run. Then when the No. 1 defense had its chance, Trey Brown returned an interception 70 yards for a score and Brody Bowles recovered a fumble.
Even though the varsity/JV portion lasted only 50 minutes, a lot of players were worked in and the coaches will have a lot to examine on film this week.
“(Today) we’ll have a coaches meeting and evaluate (scrimmage) film,” Campbell said. “We’ll watch Coffeyville’s video. And we’ll start to put together a game plan for them, a scouting report. We’ll talk through our schedule for next week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We’ll want to be able to finish installing things, our special teams. Thursday, pre-game and and you try to make sure you have all your T’s crossed and I’s dotted. You never know until Friday night gets here.
“I think our kids appear to be pretty close to being ready and we’ll find out next Friday night.”
———
NOTES — By looking at the photo above, it will be noted that the Tigers are wearing new uniforms this season. Bob Campbell-coached teams have worn almost nearly the same thing each season since the beginning of his first stint as head coach in 1993. But the manufacturer of the previous set of uniforms, Russell Athletic, has decided to concentrate on athletic clothing other than uniforms, so a new set of uniforms would have to have been made regardless....
Coffeyville and Fort Scott have never opened a season against each other before. The Tigers had opened the past six seasons against Parsons and won them all. Overall, Fort Scott has won seven consecutive season openers. The Tigers have also won four straight games versus Coffeyville and 20 of the last 22 meetings with the Golden Tornado going back to 1995....