Pioneers gearing up for opener
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Game time is almost here.
With the 2002 season opener just two days away, the Pioneer football team’s focus has shifted from the teaching and conditioning drills of the preseason to preparation for a specific opponent.
That opponent this week is the Centennial Cougars, the team which holds the distinction of being the only squad in two seasons to suffer a loss to the Pioneers.
With tape of last season’s 24-13 win over the Cougars, as well as film of Centennial’s preseason scrimmage with Blackman High School, head coach Gerald Tidwell and his staff worked through the weekend to formulate a game plan they hope will be successful Friday night.
Tidwell said preparing for the Cougars, or any specific foe, is much simpler for players than the broad training methods they use during the preseason.
“In the preseason, we work on every possible scenario,” he explained. “We try to teach kids techniques, and how to block based on where techniques are.
“So early on, we’re blocking every possible defense they can throw at us. But when it comes game week, we’ve got an idea of the two or three looks a defense is going to give us, and we start focussing on just those looks.”
While game preparation allows for a more narrow focus during practices, Tidwell noted preseason work gives a team the opportunity to experiment with different game plans. Of course those experiments, such as last week’s switch to an “I” formation, sometimes fail.
“We looked at moving to an ‘I,’ but the ‘I’ didn’t work out for us in (the Mt. Juliet) scrimmage at all,” Tidwell said. “What it came down to is our fullbacks. When T.J. (Jarvis) is not there, they’re not quick enough to run our option principles. T.J. can hit the hole, but the other guys weren’t quick enough to hit it.
“So we’re staying with our base offense, and we’ll go to the ‘I’ out of this set. We’ll run some option principles, and a few wing-T principles, but it will all be from this set.”
Kickoff for Friday’s game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Centennial.