AREA FOOTBALL TEAMS GET READY TO BEGIN WORKOUTS FOR 1999 SEASON

Summary:

High school squads will start practicing Monday.

By Bob Miller

First-year Cape Central football coach Lawrence Brookins doesn't believe in two-a-days.

He prefers the one-long-practice-a-day.

When high school football practices across the state begin on Monday, Brookins isn't going to let his players out of sight until they're finished.

"From 11:30 (a.m.) till noon, they'll have a break to do whatever they want to do -- shower, change their clothes, take a nap in the air conditioning, whatever," Brookins said. "But they can't leave."

The locker rooms will open at 6:45 a.m. with practice to begin for skill position players at 7:40 a.m. Practice will end at about 2 p.m.

Not all the time will be spent outdoors. From 11-11:25, the team will have an opportunity to rest and eat, but the Tigers -- who went 4-6 last season under Jerry Dement -- will still be learning during offensive meetings in a classroom setting.

Brookins said he is looking for about 60-65 players to show up for the first day, but would be excited if more showed up.

Brookins said a one-practice session has worked out better in his experience as assistant coach at other schools.

First, he said the one-practice format lets players keep part-time jobs, plus it keeps them from getting as burned out.

"When I was an athlete, I hated them (two practices a day)," Brookins said. "It was hard to practice all day, go home and do chores and odd jobs, take a quick snooze; and before you know it, the alarm is going off again.

"This way, kids won't have excuses to not show up for that second practice. Plus, it'll keep them fresh mentally. When they go home, they can forget about football for the rest of the day and do what they need to do."

Brookins also said it will help parents of players who cannot drive to practice.

JACKSON

Jackson coach Carl Gross hopes the Indians learned their lesson last year.

Gross said one reason for Jackson's 4-6 record a year ago was a lack of hard work at practice.

When the Indians' first two-a-day session begins at 9 a.m. on Monday, he expects that his team will take practice a little more seriously than last year.

"One of the biggest things we'll be looking for is for people who will practice hard," Gross said. "That hurt us last year and it showed up in games when we didn't practice hard at times.

"Last year, a lot of us thought we could just show up in red and white and we found out you just can't do that. We need to make sure that everyone who is there is there to play hard. We're all going to be robbing the same train."

Jackson will conduct practices from 9-11 a.m. and again from 5-7:30 p.m. for the first week.

Despite the disappointing season a year ago, Gross expects a better turnout this year.

"We had 77 show up at camp for grades 10-12," he said. "That's a pretty good number. We've increased every year."

Gross said he has already seen an improved work ethic from a year ago, though he hopes the trend continues.

"We have seven kids back on defense that started a year ago and I think they've gotten bigger, stronger and faster," Gross said. "We think we'll be better this year on defense and our overall attitude is better after this summer's camps.

"I don't know that we'll win more games, but this group has worked harder so far. We're looking for a lot of good things from them."

SCOTT CITY

In his first year at Scott City, coach Roy Williams already knows that he's in a good situation.

The Rams went 10-2 last season, advancing to the Class 2A quarterfinals.

Williams, who replaced Terry Flannigan, has 34 years of experience, has won a state championship and has made four semifinal appearances during his tenure at Berkeley High School in St. Louis County.

With that kind of background, Williams should know what a successful team is when he sees one and he's liked what he's seen so far. But he'll know more once practice starts at 8 a.m. Monday.

"The weights and the camps went real well this summer, considering all the summer jobs and things like that," Williams said. "We're in pretty good shape in terms of depth, injuries, returning lettermen."

What Williams likes more than anything is his team's experience. But not just any experience.

"The biggest plus, really is the amount of solid playing time as a winner that these kids had last year. Flannigan was able to play quite a few freshmen last year for about a quarter and a lot of them -- the juniors and everybody -- will have a chance now because of their ability.

"That kind of playing time as a winner, that makes an unbelievable amount of difference. Their confidence level is higher that `I'm not going to get thrown around like a rag doll.' You have the confidence that you'll be doing the kicking."

Williams is still unsure of the logistics of his practices. Though the first practice will be at 8 a.m. Monday, he may go with two-a-days or one long practice in the evening.

"I would rather go just one time," Williams said. "That's the way I did it (at Berkeley). We had much better success going once a day in the late evening. That's what I would prefer to do. It depends on what the kids and the other coaches think."

ST. VINCENT

Cape Central coach Lawrence Brookins is hoping for 60-65 players to show up for the first day of practice.

In Perryville, St. Vincent High -- a school four class sizes smaller than Central -- had 68 attend a summer camp.

"That's down a little from last year," coach Paul Sauer said. "We had 71 last year. But 68 is still spectacular. Last year we had 93 boys at our school and 71 wanted to play football."

The Indians have enjoyed a winning tradition over the past several years, which includes a second-place Class 1A finish at state last season. That definitely has contributed to the overwhelming percentage of students who play football.

Sauer is optimistic that the winning tradition will spill into the upcoming season.

"We most definitely had a good year last year and we have quite a few kids coming back," said Sauer, whose team went 13-1 last year. "Hopefully we can get back to work and have another great year."

St. Vincent returns 12 seniors who played quite a bit last season.

Sauer will also have 22 juniors at his disposal.

St. Vincent will practice from 6-8 p.m. starting Monday.

"Our philosophy has been that we want quality more than quantity. We want the kids to give it all they got for two hours. The heat takes a toll on them if they're out there four and five hours," Sauer said.

Sauer has been impressed so far with his team's summer.

"We've had a real good turnout in the offseason in the weight room," he said. "The kids have really worked hard and hopefully it will really work well for them."

PERRYVILLE

Coming off an impressive season a year ago, Perryville coach Jerry Tucker is seeing more Pirates than in seasons past.

"We just completed two weeks of summer camp, and we had 112 eighth-12th graders, which is an improvement," Tucker said. "We had 41 kids from sophomore on up."

Tucker said the team's 9-2 record and district championship last year has created more excitement and the team, he said, has a lot of promise.

"The winning season helped us get the kids out and motivate the kids. We should be pretty decent I believe. We have one returner on offense and three returners on defense, but that doesn't bother me because we had a lot of players who would've started for most other teams coming off the bench last year.

"We're going to be bigger up front than last year and have a little more speed than last year, but it's a matter of seeing what they do come game time."

Before game time, of course, comes practice time, which begins at 7 a.m. Monday and will be done "until we get it done," Tucker said.

"With the type of community we're in with the farming and such, it's easier to have one block in the morning. We went two-a-days at camp, so their physically ready, anyway."

CHAFFEE

During the first week of practice at Chaffee, the Red Devils will do the usual drills -- hitting the sleds, running the sprints and learning the plays.

But just as important as all these things, first-year Chaffee coach Allan Horrell said, is finding out who the leaders are.

"The key to us will be that we'll have to find the leaders who will lead by example from the start of practice (Monday). We need to find out which ones will be committed for the long haul."

After a disappointing 1-9 season a year ago, Horrell said the team gets most of experience back from the backfield, but loses most of the offensive line.

"We have a lot of kids with a couple of years of JV experience and have had time to develop a little bit," Horrell said. "It was only three years ago we started up a JV program so these kids coming up haven't been thrust into varsity before they were ready."

Chaffee will conduct two-a-day practices which will start at 8 a.m. and at 5:30 p.m. for one week.