CULLMAN, Ala. – Its been a long spring, and I think a lot of people are craving a return to the normal day to day, but we still have the summer ahead of us. However, local teams are getting a taste of the familiar this week as players and coaches return to campus and come together to begin their summer workout programs. Teams are working through a long list of health and safety guidelines to make it happen as well as trying to make up for lost time in the spring but they’re all excited to be training together and focusing on the upcoming season.
Hanceville Bulldogs Head Coach Cody McCain touched on some of the biggest challenges that come from missing out on spring practices. It’s hard to make up that lost time but McCain is optimistic considering the amount of returning players he and his staff are working with this year.
“I think the biggest thing you miss out on when you miss spring is seeing your eighth-grade kids and ninth grade kids and trying to find out how many of those can contribute to your team. It’s not ideal to have to play a lot of ninth graders but last year Zach Campbell was a huge player for us last year as a freshman and Brosnan Ward played a lot as a freshman so we’ve played freshmen before and you want to kind of get a gauge on those kids to see which ones can contribute right away and which ones may need a year on JV,” McCain said. “You’d also like to get a chance to see the kids coming out to play that didn’t play last year and see where they’re at, so I think those are the biggest things you lose. It wasn’t as bad for us as it could’ve been in previous years though because we only have one senior that we lost from last season so 99% of our team is back and we have a pretty good idea of what those guys can do.”
West Point Warriors Head Coach Don Farley and his staff will also be dealing with loss of spring ball. Farley feels confident that his older players will be ready to go when fall practice gets underway but knows he and his staff will have to work with the younger and newer players who didn’t get the opportunity to learn in the spring.
“The younger guys are where you really miss out on spring practice. That’s a chance for us to get to see those guys and see what they can do and kind of start teaching them some of the terminology that we use and it’s a chance for them to see how things are done at the varsity level. We’re all the time recruiting the halls wanting guys to give spring training a try and you miss out on seeing those guys too,” Farley said. “Our older guys know our system and they understand it and it’s just a good chance to let them play a little football, but the biggest obstacle is missing time with the young guys. We feel like going into the fall they’re going to be a little bit behind because they didn’t get to have that spring training but we’ll do a good getting them caught up and we’ll ask them to work a little harder in grasping what we’re doing.”
Cullman Bearcats Head Coach Oscar Glasscock is entering his second season at Cullman and despite missing out on spring practice a couple months ago, Glasscock is optimistic that his team will be able to more than make up for that lost time. The AHSAA has considered giving teams an option of 10 spring practices or an additional week of fall practice for years and with coronavirus shutting down the school year prematurely, the association opted to pass the proposal.
“We would’ve chosen the fall practice option anyway because we have a lot of football players that play on the baseball team and our baseball team is in the finals every year. We’ve also got kids that compete in track and we have a lot of successful spring sports here so it was kind of a no-brainer for us to not do spring training and choose the extra week in the fall anyway,” Glasscock said. “So, as far as practice time, we’re really not behind on the field. The biggest thing we missed was the gains we would’ve made in the weight room and the agility and speed work that we missed between mid-March and the end of May.”
McCain and his staff have had to make some adjustments to their summer workout program to fit into the necessary safety guidelines, but he doesn’t think it will have any adverse effect on his players’ progress. Something else he noticed was his team’s excitement to reunite and work together again after an abrupt end to the school year.
“We’re putting kids into small groups. I think we had groups of eight today and about 35 or 40 kids total that were there so we’re kind of doing a circuit workout. We’ll have eight kids in the weight room and eight in the gym and two groups on the football field doing something, so I think that’s the biggest change we’ve had to make,” McCain said. “It was honestly the first time I had seen some of those guys since school shut down. The kids had a couple days last month to come clean out their lockers and I saw some of them at graduation and things like that but as far as getting the group together again, this was the first day that we saw it and it was fun. We finished workouts and had 25 kids that wanted to hang out and play on the field together, so I think it was the same way for them to. They haven’t been together in a long time, so they were excited to be back again. I’m sure as the summer goes on, they won’t have that same excitement every day but here at the start they were really pumped up to be together again.”
Farley took time on the Warriors’ first morning of workouts to explain the health and safety rules that will need to be followed throughout the summer, but he wanted to make sure to touch on something else as well. He wants his team to be an example of unity within the community and on the first day of workouts, Farley noticed how excited his players and coaches were to be working together again.
“Unfortunately, we had to spend the first part of the day talking to them about the “new normal” and how our groups are being staged in different areas. We’re wearing masks, kids are bringing their own water bottles, we’re taking temperatures when they arrive and all that stuff, so we spent some time talking about that and then we took a little while to talk about unity,” Farley said. “We talked about how we want our guys to come together, especially right now when our country is trying so hard to divide itself. We want to be an example to our community and to our school of unity and then when we did get the working out and conditioning the energy was high. It was so great to see the guys and you could tell they were excited, and all the coaches were excited. This had a different vibe to it. It was awesome to get to be around them and we were just so glad to see the kids.”
Glasscock and his staff have been hard at work getting their players adjusted to the health and safety guidelines and even though it’s a little unfamiliar right now, Glasscock has already found some positives to take away from the current setup.
“It’s been an adjustment for sure and I’ve been telling the kids that life is going to deal you adversity and that’s why the game of football is so full of life lessons. This is a difficult circumstance that we’re going to have to learn how to navigate through just like you will in life with other things,” Glasscock said. “We’ve got to find a way to be productive, to get better, to do our job, be good teammates and just get better despite these big changes.”
Despite the unusual circumstances and adjustments affecting workout programs, Glasscock says its been exciting to get back on campus and see the familiar faces of his kids and coaches. One of the things he has enjoyed most since workouts began is watching new teammates interact and get to know one another as they prepare for the upcoming season.
“It’s been great. It’s great to see my fellow coaches here. One of the big things that’s different is our returning players haven’t worked out with our rising 10th graders. So, that period of getting to know your knew teammates is always fun to watch and it’s a really good group. I really like our 10th grade class, they’re really good kids and I’ve had them in a strength class all year, so I know them, and they know how to work, and they’ve gotten a lot stronger,” Glasscock said. “Some of our varsity guys are probably surprised at how strong some of these 10th graders are that they don’t even know. We were all out there as one group for the first time Tuesday and we hit the ground running and that’s one of the big benefits of the way we’ve been able to restructure the strength and conditioning programs in Cullman City Schools.”
It’s been an adjustment for local teams to be sure, and there seems to be something new happening each week that makes this year tougher for everyone but for local high school athletes and coaches, this week has brought them back together to work towards their common goal and delivered the most fun they’ve had in a long while.
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