Looking over the Crops:At Northwest Guilford Football Practice on Monday Night

Hit the road for some high school football practice on Monday night….Made the trek over to Northwest Guilford School Road, and took in some of the practice with the Northwest Guilford Vikings…

Guaranteed that NWG would be practicing on Monday night, and the first thing that got my attention, was that Northwest was practicing on the big football practice field near the tennis courts…

Good to be off of the little field back there behind the NWG football field house, but that field was still in use, because it looked like the field hockey team was out there on that field practicing on Monday night…

The NWG football team looked to about 80-90 strong, meaning for the JV team and varsity team combined, it looked there were around 90 kids out there practicing on Monday evening….

The team was doing drills when I first arrived, and after a few minutes of those group drills, the team went to work at the far end of the big field, and they started running sprints….There was lots of running….Running long sprints, and running short sprints, and I’m sure this is all part of the first week conditioning plan….

NWG did those sprints for quite a while, and they did a few short suicides too, and if they missed the get off, on the proper snap count, the Vikings began doing up-downs…Nothing like several sets of up-downs to get a team’s attention….

After doing all of this running, I was thinking practice was about over, and as the team finished/completed their running, they met at mid-field and did some team yelling and chanting, and this usually signifies the end of a practice, but for the Northwest Guilford Vikings, things were just getting started good…

NWG, with their running done, now went into group work, and the groups were split up, into about four groups spread out around the big field…The QB’s were throwing passes to four different receivers running criss-crossing routes….The passes would be going in four different directions…Other groups included linemen doing drills, and defensive groups, working on drills….

After this group work was finished, the Vikings hit the offense vs. defense drills, and it was mainly the QB’s throwing to the receivers, with pass coverage from the defensive backs, and linebackers…If #12 is the top NWG QB, he was throwing the ball pretty sharply on Monday night….NWG kept this offense-defense work going for quite a while….

I finally decided I had seen all I need to see….I would need to saying here, if you have seen one early-season football conditioning practice for the local high schools, that you have seen them all, but I can’t really say that in totality, but I do have to say, that very many of these early season practices, are a lot alike…

Drills, Running, lots of group work, lots more running, plenty of up-downs, and then some more sprints and drills…

The hay is far from being in the barn, and now is the time to prepare for the harvest…The fields are ripe unto harvest, and as of today, on the high school football level, in Guilford County, the crops are in the fields…