Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008

Football's back!

Didn’t matter that the skies were gray and that I had to dodge a few raindrops.

It was the first day of prep football season.

Need I say more?

One thing we at the Herald are going to attempt to do this fall is hit a couple of camps a day and give fans an update as to what’s going on as teams prepare for the upcoming season.

Today, I got out to Richland, Kamiakin and River View’s camps.

Kamiakin

The spread of the spread offense has made its way to the Tri-Cities, and one of its biggest proponents this season will be the Braves.

Coach Craig Beverlin and his staff shelled out $3,500 of their own money to travel to California to attend a seminar by Tony Franklin, the offensive coordinator at Auburn University who is one of the gurus of “The System,” his name for the spread attack.

“We did this in the 1980s, but not with this level of sophistication,” Beverlin said. “I don’t think (Franklin) invented the wheel, but he’s a rich man for a reason. (The seminar) gave us a different view of this offense.”

Kamiakin fans who have gotten used to a paleolithic offense the past two years -- run, run, and run some more -- have got to be excited about the thought of watching the Braves throw the ball all over the field this fall.

“The last two years, we planned our team around the punter, and we had quite a bit of success,” said Beverlin, whose teams went 21-3 the last two years and reached the state semifinals in 2006. “We put our best athletes on defense, and on third-and-7 we ran the ball.

“This year, we’ll be taking a lot of chances. It’s exciting for us as a staff to coach it. We’ve got a great quarterback in Corey Hutchison and a lot of skilled kids coming up around him.”

With that bevy of skill players, though, comes a paucity of big hosses to stuff the run.

“That’ll be our Achilles’ heel this season,” Beverlin said. “Teams will be able to pound the ball on us.”

Richland

Even the Bombers are joining the spread generation.

After pounding the ball behind league rushing champion and co-MVP Marcelino Morales last season (247 carries for 1,493 yards), first-year coach Mike Neidhold is going to open up the attack to exploit his skill players at receiver -- seniors Brett Jacobs, Jamison Rowe and Cody Shepherd.

“We don’t have Marcelino any more,” Neidhold said. “Last year, we experimented with the shotgun, but this year, we’re going to do that a little bit more and see how it looks.”

Rowe may also take some direct snaps and/or some handoffs in the backfield -- a la Florida’s All-American wideout, Percy Harvin.

“We’ve got to find ways to get Jamison the ball,” Neidhold said.

As to who will be taking the snaps from center -- shotgun or otherwise -- the competition is between three players with Jacobs’ move to wide receiver.

Sophomore Chris Hays, who quarterbacked the freshman team last year and ran the team during spring ball, is the favorite ahead of junior Hayden Hilty (who started two games at midseason a year ago) and another sophomore, Kenton Brunson.

“Chris has absorbed our new terminology, our new philosophy, and is just a hard-working kid,” Neidhold said.

Jacobs was the starter for the first month of last season before suffering an ankle injury. He and Neidhold talked last spring about his future with the football program, considering Jacobs is one of the top baseball prospects in the state, and Jacobs expressed an interest in playing defensive back more this season.

“In the spring, we made the switch. He didn’t play any quarterback during the times he was able to make it (to practice),” Neidhold said.

River View

I think it’s safe to say that River View was the last team to kick off fall camp. The Panthers didn’t start their first practice until 7 p.m. to accommodate coaches’ commitments to school functions.

Turnout was light, but don’t project that to mean interest isn’t there. Call it part of first-year coach Brett Jay’s learning curve -- a mailing miscue meant quite a few informational letters didn’t make it to the players in time.

Once everyone is on the same page, Jay estimates about 65 to 70 players in the program, based upon who turned out for the two (yes, two) team camps the Panthers attended -- the Tri-City and Eastern Oregon camps.

“This group bought in early to our system,” Jay said. “They’re young, but a lot of them were on the sidelines last year and experienced going to Royal (a 66-6 loss) and to Connell (a 20-0 loss), and they didn’t like how it felt. They are out here to turn things around, to compete with those idolized programs.”

That is a tall order -- River View last made the playoffs in 2005, and this year’s team is young. “We could start anywhere from five to eight sophomores,” Jay said.

To improve the odds, Jay has turned to -- you guessed it -- the spread offense, tweaking it throughout the summer.

“We started out going with the traditional spread, with one tight end and one back,” he said. “But what it’s evolved into the last two months is the Texas Tech air attack. Over the summer, due to our talent, we’ve gone to dropping the quarterback back in the gun and doing more four- and five-wide sets.”

Two sophomores who should see the ball quite a bit are RB Chance Watt, the younger brother of former 1,000-yard runner (and current RV assistant) E.J. Watt, and TE Eric Farnworth, a 6-2, 230-pounder who will definitely stretch defenses.