Last weekend was the first opportunity for area football teams to hit someone other than one of their teammates when each school engaged in a three- or four-way scrimmage as a tuneup for this weekend’s season-opener.
Not surprisingly, most coaches hope to accomplish the same thing. “We want to be physical, we don’t want to turn it over, we want to do the fundamentals right, and obviously we want to come out healthy,” said Oxford third-year coach Mike Chrystie.
So how did Chrystie’s team fare against the likes of Chenango Forks, Delhi, and Vestal? “I felt it was the best we’ve looked since I’ve been here,” he said. “Scoring on Forks twice gave us a lot of confidence. We didn’t show anything but our bread and butter stuff, and I think that’s what the other teams did, too.”
Unadilla Valley-Edmeston is coming off a winless season, and it had just a skeleton crew eligible for a four-way scrimmage that included Sherburne-Earlville, B-G, and Morrisville-Eaton. “I thought we held up physically until fatigue set in at the end,” said Storm head coach Jack Loeffler. “We ran nothing but our base stuff, and it was good. We have an intelligent buch of kids, and they all have good football sense. We saw some flaws, of course, and went to work on those this week in practice.”
S-E first-year head coach Mike Jaspar echoed many of the same sentiments as Chrystie and Loeffler as he weighed in on the good and the bad from last weekend’s scrimmage. “I thought we had good success moving the ball on the ground and executing our offense,” he said. “Defensively, we came out flat in the first series, but picked it up the rest of the scrimmage. It was a little sloppy out there, but it was the same for everyone.”
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The following are game previews for this weekend’s local games:
Owego at Norwich, 7 p.m.
After two decades, a new “John” takes the helm for Norwich as John Martinson steps in for John Pluta, who amassed over 100 career wins and is second all-time on Norwich football’s coaching victories list behind the legendary Kurt Beyer.
“Our first game tonight, it’s tough to show too much (of our offense and defense), but we’ll look similar to what people have seen in the past,” Martinson said
Owego visits Tornadoland for the second straight season. On opening day a year ago, Norwich rallied for two second-half touchdowns to upend the Indians, 18-14. “They look impressive on defense and return seven starters,” Martinson said. “Offensively, Parker Evans played a lot of tailback for them last year, and they look to get him the ball on the corner and by running traps. He’s a fast, elusive kid.”
Norwich is coming off a scrimmage in which it looked good in some areas, while other are in need of improvement. “We were happy with the way our backs hit the holes, but they need to work on their faking, and our linemen need to stay on their blocks longer,” Martinson said. “Our motto all preseason has been to block to the whistle, fake to the whistle, and run to the whistle.”
Regardless of where Norwich stands in the finer points of the game, Martinson make one promise about his team: “We’ll come at you, we’ll hit you hard, and we’ll fight and never quit.”
