Siegel outlasts weary WCHS at scrimmage
Three intense days of fall camp finally took their toll on the Pioneers Thursday, during the second half of a full day of workouts at Murfreesboro Siegel.
Head coach Chris Madewell said although his squad held its own against the Stars for much of their all-day session of practices and scrimmages, by the afternoon the fatigue of constant workouts from Monday to Wednesday had become evident.
‘I felt like in the morning, in our first practice, we did pretty well,’ he said. ‘Our offensive and defensive lines controlled their lines, and looked really strong up against those guys. We were able to have a lot of success both in our pass ‘skelly’ and our inside drill.
‘In the afternoon, though, I felt like our legs were just shot. We did some things well, but other times we missed some tackles even though we were in position to make the play, but just didn’t have the legs to make it. I’m not going to come out and make excuses, but our guys had really been working hard all week, and Siegel hadn’t been practicing as much as we had over the past few days, and the difference in the amount of fatigue was easy to see in the afternoon session. But we weren’t going up there to win a scrimmage, we were going up there to get better, and we did. That’s the big thing.’
The day’s events were not without their share of after-the-whistle excitement, however.
‘We saw some excitement in the first practice,’ Madewell noted. ‘We were doing a one-on-one drill with just two guys going against each other and the rest of the team gathered around them, and the boys got fired up and we had a little fight break out for a minute.
‘It wasn’t very serious, and you don’t want to see stuff like that on Friday nights. But in an individual scrimmage situation like that, you like to see that kind of intensity; you just don’t want to see it get out of hand.’
The Pioneers returned to the practice field Friday afternoon for a three-hour session, and will work from 3:30 until 6 p.m. each day this week in preparation for their only home scrimmage of the preseason, Friday’s 4 p.m. contest against East Ridge. Madewell said the team will go into this week’s workouts with somewhat of a ‘game week’ mentality as they prepare for their next scrimmage.
‘The first thing is, I want to get our legs back under us,’ he explained. ‘We’ve made it through camp, and we’re not going to be doing nearly s much practice and running as we did (last week). We should be fresh, physically, so we’re at the point where we’re starting to get ready to see how well we can prepare for a Friday night game.’
The Pioneers’ season begins in just under three weeks, with an Aug. 24 home game against DeKalb County.